The Metropolitan Youth Orchestra of Huntsville played at Carnegie Hall in New York City during the summer of 1996. Elizabeth performed as principal clarinet. Meg, Christopher, and I also made the trip.The orchestra performed Tchaikovsky's Second Symphony, and accompanied a professional percussion group called Nexus that shared the billing.
I hadn't experienced a hall of this quality before, and I expected it to be very soft and precise, but actually there is a lot of reverberation, almost an echo. Somehow the sound from the stage and the sound coming back from the back of the hall meld into a big impressive sound.
Elizabeth's solo in the second movement of the Tchaikovsky was big and round and filled the hall, and the thought of her sound waves being absorbed into those walls to join sound waves from people like Isaac Stern was very impressive to me (more so to me than to her, I think).
We traveled by bus to Atlanta and by train from Atlanta to New York. Meg and I were chaperones for five boys, percussionists and horn players (they were short of boy chaperones, which was why we got boys instead of girls; Elizabeth liked this arrangement). The kids were great. Not all the regular Symphonic kids could go so some kids from the second-level orchestra got promoted for this trip. So the orchestra kids ranged from 12 or 13 through graduating seniors, and they all got along. It was not unusual on the train to see a seventh grader playing cards with a junior and a senior. There were no fights and no discipline problems to speak of. We were pretty lenient with our group because we knew we could trust them, and as a result Meg and I now have a reputation as the "easy" chaperones and everyone wants to be in our group "next time."
We toured Lincoln Center, Radio City, the World Trade Center, rode the Staten Island Ferry, shopped in Chinatown, and generally did all the tourist stuff. Christopher and Meg and I went to the Empire State Building while the orchestra rehearsed. It is not as high or as open as the World Trade Center, but somehow it has more class. When King Kong climbed the Empire State Building the movie became a classic. When he climbed the World Trade Center, it was a dud.
On our tour of Lincoln Center, our tour guide, an older lady (an old fuddy-duddy, excuse my French) told us all about the rosewood that is used throughout the opera house. One of the kids, Eric, asked about the wood paneling in the elevators. She kind of needled him after that and I thought it was all in good fun, and so did he, so later on when we got in another elevator with a metal mesh wall, Eric asked if it was rosewood and I told him no, it was rare African aluminum. Well, that lady just ripped into us, looking straight at Eric and not at me, and really lectured us on how it was not appropriate to joke around and show so little respect for such an august place. So Eric and I are persona non grata at Lincoln Center. It really is a very impressive place, but it gets a bit stuffy.
Radio City turned out to be a fun tour, not at all stuffy like certain other places. They let the kids goof off on stage and gave us a photo op with a rockette, and they took us up to the Rockettes' practice room and let the kids dance and fool around while one of them played the piano. Then our guide told us that, by the way, that piano had been played by Liberace, Ray Charles, and George Gershwin. The girl that played the piano said she would never wash her hands again.
One of the kids was rather indignant that the restaurants didn't serve sweet tea, and kept trying to order it. In one place they brought him a Snapple.