Classical musicians dream of their debut at Carnegie Hall. A concert sponsored by the hall’s management is a high point in even the most stellar career. But virtuosity isn’t the only path to the most fabled concert venue in the United States.
For a fee, independent for-profit concert producers routinely book musicians who otherwise would never have the experience of performing in Carnegie Hall: high school bands and orchestras, community instrumental ensembles, church choirs and even some professional-level groups.
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And it’s not just Carnegie Hall.
Travel companies organize national and international performance trips that can take a musical group almost anywhere it wants to perform. The agencies find the venues and book the dates, as well as arrange all the travel and hotels.
Occasionally, a musical ensemble will make the arrangement by itself. Regardless of how the trip is planned, when it’s over and the suitcases are stowed in the closet, members can boast, “I sang in Westminster Abbey.”
This spring, Mamie Morlacci, orchestra director for Klein Forest High School took 108 student musicians from the suburban Houston school to the National Invitational Band and Orchestra Festival held by Field Studies International. They played in Carnegie Hall’s Stern Auditorium.
The March trip was the second time Morlacci has taken a group there.
“It’s a once-in-a-lifetime event. These kids will never have another opportunity to play in Carnegie Hall,” she says.
So on March 26, for half an hour, the Klein Forest students played six pieces, some with student soloists.
Klein Forest auditioned for the festival by sending a tape to Field Studies International. Anonymous judges — “adjudicators,” in the language of musicians — evaluated it, says Steve Keim, Carnegie Hall coordinator for Field Studies International.
Groups accepted into the festival also were adjudicated during the festival by three of the leading wind ensemble conductors in the country, Keim says.
The trip cost each student $1,450 for five days and four nights in New York City. Of that, Morlacci says, approximately $650 went to Field Studies International.
For that fee, the Klein Forest group bought the right to warm up in a rehearsal room at Carnegie Hall and perform onstage — plus attend a Broadway show, basic sightseeing, transportation and baggage handling, and commemorative T-shirts.
MidAmerica Productions is Keim’s main New York competitor in music. It focuses on choral concerts with mass choirs made up of singers from all over the country.
A group effort
Lahonda Sharp, director of music and fine arts at Christ United Methodist Church in Sugar Land, took 56 people from several Houston churches to the April 3 performance of Mozart’s “Coronation” Mass, which she conducted. They were part of a choir of 280 singers from more than a dozen churches and schools nationwide.
She’s proud that this was a return engagement. “I’m just little Lahonda from Sugar Land,” she says. “Apparently I didn’t embarrass myself too much the last time.”
Peter Tiboris, a former music educator and choral conductor, founded MidAmerica Productions 21 years ago. By the end of this season, he says, he will have produced more than 350 concerts in Carnegie Hall’s large Stern Auditorium and 250 chamber concerts in its smaller Weill Recital Hall.
“We have a pool of choirs we draw from; we do not go out and just open this up to anybody.”
For his most prestigious events, Tiboris engages conductors such as the wildly popular choral composer John Rutter and the esteemed Bach specialist Helmut Rilling. He provides a professional-level freelance orchestra to accompany the singers.
Typically, a choir will rehearse with the conductor on two successive days before a dress rehearsal and concert in Stern Auditorium.
For that, MidAmerica charges $350-$375. (Travel, hotel and other activities in New York are extra.
In the summer, England offers plenty of opportunities for visiting ensembles. When the choirs of the major cathedrals are on vacation, the clergy and staff will accept choirs from all over the world to sing daily and Sunday services. The more famous the church, the higher the standards visiting ensembles must meet. Choirs pay their own way.
Robert Simpson, organist/choirmaster at Houston’s Christ Church Cathedral, took his Cathedral Choir to England in July 2003. He hopes the group can return in 2006.
The choir sang a Sunday service at Cambridge University’s Clare College plus two Choral Evensongs at Westminster Abbey. Then it had a residency at Norwich Cathedral, where it sang all the services for one week.
“We go partly because it’s so much fun and partly because it strengthens our ties with the Anglican Communion and gives us an increased appreciation for our heritage,” Simpson says. “It’s as much a spiritual trip as a musical one.”
“To walk into these historical buildings and be part of tradition of choristers that dates back hundred of years is a thrill.”
Simpson worked with a tour company in San Francisco to arrange the trip.
In Houston, the major organizer of such trips is Intropa Tours, a subsidiary of a company specializing in equipment, competitions and summer camps for cheerleaders and dance teams. Intropa Tours has been in business for 48 years.
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Strictly performance tours
“We only do performance tours,” says James Knapp, director of marketing and sales, and artistic consultant for Intropa.
Like MidAmerica Productions and Field Studies International, Knapp wants to hear a recording of the group ahead of time.
He helps the conductor narrow aspirations and choose dates. “Some groups have lofty ideas [of places] that they want to sing in — say, the Sydney Opera House. It’s my job to match musical levels with the standards of the venue.”
Then Knapp goes to work, assembling a “publicity packet with a CD and a proposed program” and sending it to appropriate venues, “whether it’s a cathedral or a joint concert with a [local] high school choir.
“Whoever is in charge of booking there will say yea or nay.”
When the Dallas Symphony Chorus wanted “a major concert with a major conductor in a major hall,” Knapp says Intropa Tours linked it up with Zubin Mehta and the Israel Philharmonic for concerts in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.
Intropa does “everything from the Sydney Opera House and [London’s] Royal Opera House to the smaller Methodist church in northern England.”
Intropa pays the fees necessary to perform in a building or church and folds the cost into the price of the tour. It also does promotion and publicity.
“Groups don’t care about the cost. They just want to sing in St. Paul’s [Cathedral in London].” (It costs $750-$1,000 to rent for a full concert, Knapp says.)
Stephen Roddy, founder/director of the Houston Children’s Chorus and director of music ministries at Grace Presbyterian Church, makes such trips reluctantly.
He will take singers from both groups to a MidAmerica Productions event in Carnegie Hall in June.
“We are the featured children’s choir,” he says. (The Children’s Chorus will extend its stay to sing in New York churches. The choir will arrange those engagements itself.)