Eric's 18th Christmas Tour...A Veteran's View

Hi, It’s Eric, inviting you to come along on my 18th Christmas tour.  Along the way we’ll check in with Cortez and Michael – it’s their first!

Christmas is our favorite season to sing, and it begins wherever the concert tour starts.  This year in the first week we were in Palm Desert, California, then Boston, Chicago,  Platteville, WI and St. Louis.    Somehow the Christmas season truly starts when we get to New York. I’m  a native Californian but there’s no denying that  Christmas is in the air here. If there’s a little snow, that makes it even better.   Each time my wife Dorothee has come to New York with me, it snows!

Here’s the beautiful Metropolitan Museum of Art where we performed the first two of six concerts on Sunday night.  This is our 17th year at the Met, so by now there are many many familiar faces in the audience. This is where we recorded our Christmas DVD five years ago.  In the Medieval Sculpture Hall, the environment and the acoustic absolutely match the music, which makes it a hugely rewarding evening for us.

A day of media madness.  We left the hotel at 5.40am for NBC studios, did two appearances on the TODAY Show (hope you saw them!), a taping of a Christmas special for Sirius Satellite Radio, then an in-store appearance for Warner Classics, our record company, at the J & R store way downtown by the Brooklyn Bridge.

I’ll just let the pictures tell the story….

We have to arrive at the TODAY show studios no later than 6AM....!

Watch video of our performance:
The Christmas Song | Carol of the Bells

Watiing to go on.....

...and heading to the studio...

MORE waiting...

...and our 2nd entrance to the studio...

...a mad dash across town...

...and we arrive at Sirius Radio....but no time to change!

PHEW! Our last stop of the day...an instore appearance at J&R.

Here are the "merch guys," still working hard after the concert.

As usual, we mingle with the audience after the concert.

Ensemble members Todd Wedge and Michael McNeil

greet Chanticleer board member Ann Goodbody.

Today we have our last two concerts at the Met, at 6.30 and 8.30pm.  This is my 17th year singing at the Met and it's always amazing, and so flattering, how people line up starting two hours before the concert.  The seats are unnumbered - there really aren't any bad ones- but people have their favorite spots to sit. What a wonderful audience - from friends and family, to members of  our board who live in New York or who travel here for the concerts, to all the people who help promote and organize us.

I'll leave you with the Christmas tree at Rockefeller Center.  We're 

leaving snowy New York for California and our Christmas Carolling 

party on Saturday.  See you soon!!!

December 1990. I have been hearing about this mythical thing called the "Christmas tour" which is supposedly as difficult to get through as it was for Jason to find the golden fleece. I have tried so far to keep my cool and not let the older guys see when I am  sweating bullets, but the fall has been intense enough already,  starting with my very first concert in my home town, a trip to  Germany to record a Josquin CD right after that, and now this.

Just  to make things a little more interesting, Mark Daniel (founding  member, and current tenor) wasn't able to make this first leg of the  Xmas blitz, so former member Neil Rogers is filling in for a few  concerts, including this one in New York City. We are singing in some place nicknamed "Smoky Mary's," and true to the name, there is a  cloud of incense hanging in the air when we enter the church. It's in the middle of Manhattan, near the Empire State Building, and while I didn't exactly come here straight from the farm, I am beginning to  feel a little overwhelmed by my surroundings. We start the rehearsals and then I hear Foster (Summerlad) start the opening strains of  "Virgen Santa" and my feelings of inadequacy start to melt away. I just can't believe how beautiful the human voice, and his in  particular, can be! I let go and just let myself get caught up in  this most beautiful of Spanish renaissance pieces, and just start to  become part of the music.

Perhaps I have learned a few things already  from my short time in Chanticleer. Maybe I might last in this job after all...

People have often suggested that we offer the chance to sing along  with us.  Last year we decided to have a carolling party in the beautiful Maybeck-designed house of one of our patrons.  The people who came - choral singers, former choral singers, people who like to sing at  Christmas had a good time and we did it again on Saturday.    

It was even more fun this year- we divide the guests into three groups including  four of us in each group.  We prepare two carols and then … have a sing off!

Then we all sang a few carols together and departed in good cheer.  We loved being back with our hometown crowd!

We rehearse up to an hour before every performance, here in Berkeley's First Congregational Church. We were taped for national broadcast.

Michael (l) and Cortez share thoughts over coffee last week in New York.

Today is our sold-out concert in Berkeley, as the Bay Area "home" season concerts get under way.  Michael Match and Cortez Mitchell, two Chanticleer members who are new to the ensemble this season, share their thoughts on the tour so far...

Michael: “I was told by a few of the guys that Christmas is the truest test of surviving Chanticleer, and I'm discovering that that was no joke! On the whole, being a member of Chanticleer has been much more demanding than I had expected, but along with that definitely comes the rewards of reaching so many more people and developing so many more musical fine-tuning abilities. The amount of singing that we are called upon to do has been the biggest change in my musical life.. I think this has made me a lot stonger as a vocalist and definitely a lot more confident in my technique. .

I was quite giddy about most of the pieces that Joe brought out for this concert, but some of them have morphed into different animals for me as we rehearsed and performed them. I love the sonorous qualities of the Part and Sandstrom but find them to be among the most vocally challenging pieces I have ever attempted in my life. It is so difficult to try to stay in tune and hold a note that is normally not THAT high, but hold it in straight tone and quietly and for about 14 measures! I'm hoping to get those pieces right at least ONCE by December 23. The Bruckner is achingly beautiful and very exciting but again, an enormous workout to keep it "inside the box" chorally In violata has been a pure joy to sing right from the first reading. I can relax and really enjoy the sets of traditional carols but I've surprised even myself in that my favorite piece is the gospel medley. I usually end up on the top notes in those as well, but those call for a style of more full-throated singing that I was used to as a soloist, so they are admittedly easier for me to sing. But the ease is not the only attraction: I really see the audience sit up in their seats and their faces perk up markedly when we get to that set. It seems like the icing on the cake for the concerts.

I really felt some special moments during this last tour, especially at the Met Museum. I had a few very dear friends in the audience and felt a special connection with a lot of our performances. On the very last concert, however, there was a woman in the front row who was obviously fighting with herself not to cry during the Biebl “Ave Maria” (she lost...and so did I incidentally). I could barely contain myself knowing that our singing was what was moving her to those tears. THIS is what it's all about, I reminded myself. I'm going to keep that as my focus for the rest of the Christmas season indeed, and hopefully for the rest of my life!”

Cortez Mitchell reports: “Coming out for that second show at the Met really brought home what I had heard from other ensemble members about the Christmas tour, but I think I was a little more afraid than I needed to be. The back to back performances were not nearly as difficult as I expected.

I also hadn’t been able to imagine what "Christmas by candle light" was about. But I must say, I couldn't agree more with the effect that it has in setting the mood for the concerts. In fact, once I conquered my fears of burning myself or someone else, it really took me to a very calm place and allowed for a more spiritual connection to the concerts. Of the music, so far I am most fond of "Oh Holy Night". It is one of my favorite of all Christmas songs, has a special place in my heart, and Joe’s arrangement is just glorious.”

We have been performing Christmas concerts in Stanford's glorious Memorial Church for many years.  It was built by the founders of Stanford University.  For more on the church, go here.

We go into a busy weekend with two performances tonight at St. Vincent's Church in Petaluma (left), then on to St. Ignatius tomorrow and the Mondavi Center at UC Davis on Sunday afternoon...phew!

In the meantime, Joe Jennings was in New York, accepting our award as Ensemble of the Year from Musical America:

(l.to.r.) Joseph Jennings, Chanticleer; Kaija Saariaho, Composer of the Year; Charles Rosen, Instrumentalist of the Year; Anna Netrebko, Musician of the Year; Sedgwick Clark, MA editor. Missing is Robert Spano, Conductor of the Year, en route to Chicago to lead opening night of "Dr. Atomic" the next evening. (Photo: Peter Schaff)

Chanticleer's Christmas concerts at the majestic St. Ignatius Church have become a San Francisco tradition.  St. Ignatius is the second largest of our Christmas venues after Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles. It's always amazing to me how many people I see who have been coming since I started with the ensemble, and before!

Here we are rehearsing in the Mondavi Center working to create the right effects

 ...

The Mondavi audience wears the most red of any of our audiences!

.

We're so happy that our new Christmas recording," Let it Snow," is doing well.  Something about it that concerns me is that the the arrangement of 'O Come, All Ye Faithful' contains the deepest note that  I've sung in 18 years as a member of the group.The  sopranos slide up into the stratosphere ... and I need the excavating equipment to get down to my low note.'  'There's a moment where it sounds like THX, and you might need high-end stereo to hear it - it won't be audible on cheaper equipment.  I wasn't even sure I could hit the note, when I first looked at the  arrangement,  I said, 'You've got to be kidding.' But then my stubborn streak came out, and I said 'Fine. I'm going to prove that I can do it.'

The most constant piece of our Christmas repertoire is Biebl's “Ave Maria”, which is on the "Our Heart's Joy" recording. I often joke that we can't walk out of a place alive without singing that at Christmas time: everybody waits with bated breath to hear it. We've performed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York every December for the past 17 years. Their staff knows us, and they've heard it many times, and they still say 'You've got to sing that.'  I think maybe part of its popularity is that so many people have sung it themselves.

Then Tuesday morning, a rain-delayed flight to Los Angeles for our  appearance at Walt Disney Concert Hall (right) tonight.  The Los Angeles  Philharmonic has invited us every year since the hall opened;  I look  forward particularly to this concert, because my family comes to see  it and join us at our post-concert reception for about 85 Los Angeles-area supporters and  fans.

The first stop of three stops on our mini mission tour: the Mission  Santa Clara where we perform often. The missions are so beautifully  decorated at Christmas; it's truly wonderful to step out onto these  'stages' and be a part of it.  I'm looking forward to our tour of nine of the missions in May with newly reconstructed music from the period.

We'll leave you with a few views of the lovely Mission Santa Clara on a cool (we're daren't say cold here in California, although we think it is!) California evening.

Mission Santa Clara on Thursday...

!

If it's Friday, we're in Carmel

Fremont's mission on Saturday.

After the final concert in St. Ignatius on Sunday we'll scatter to various destinations to be home for the holidays for a break until after New Year, when we'll come back to prepare for a European tour. You have to like travelling to be part of Chanticleer. Fortunately I do!