Wednesday, December 8, 2010

Open House

The Elf said "the best way to spread Christmas Cheer, is singing loud for all to hear."
Since this place is already cold like North Pole why not go all the way out for Christmas? Decorated Christmas trees are going up everywhere in the building. Today the company had a grand open house that was advertised in all local news media to welcome everyone in the surrounding community to visit. This special annual event took place in the company auditorium accompanied by the music and cookies. Even though my Christmas carol repertory prior to this month has been pretty much limited to Jingle Bells and We Wish You A Merry Christmas, there was nothing stopping me from getting paid regular work hours to rehearse for and perform at the all day long open house.

I wouldn't call myself a good singer but I have participated in the chorus in both high school and college. Eastman also had an annual holiday sing in the main lobby, which I found to be very enjoyable (and we were only singing about peace on earth). Today's performance was easily the most unique and complex one I've ever experienced.
First of all, we sang five 30-minute sets from 10am to 3pm (starting on each hour and the last one at 2:30). I've never spent so much time praising the Lord in my whole life. Most other religious songs I've had to sing before were typically in Latin so they didn't sound so absurd. And besides, having studied it for three years in high school I really enjoy Latin. I think if I do this once a year I can almost qualify myself as a good Christian.
In additional to the chorus there were also four soloists with ear pieces! We had a professional sound system. REALLY? Are you serious? Shouldn't people be doing moonwalk with that kind of equipment?
Instead of repeating one set of songs five times we did FIVE DIFFERENT sets. All the songs were selected from a company-approved Christmas song book (for copyright reasons, but NOT to be politically correct). And since this town has the highest Norwegian population per capital outside of Norway we had to add a Norwegian song as well! Wow, I am totally beefing up my Christmas song repertory!
To make things more complicated, only selected verses were sung for each song and sometimes the chorus alternates with the soloists. None of this is would be out of the norm if it was under any other circumstances and if we had more time to rehearse. We sang according to an excel spreadsheet detailing the song, the page#, the verses, who sings what, etc. Frankly, no part of today's event would be considered "normal" if we were anywhere else!

To keep all the singers on their toes we had to alternate between half hour of singing and half hour of working. Not sure if this makes a lot of sense considering it takes some people ten minutes just to walk back to their desk. It was kind nice at first but towards the end I was actually exhausted. During my first semester at Eastman I saw a girl faint at a rehearsal and dropped straight down to the floor. Ever since then I was always paranoid about falling off the stands. This afternoon was the worst. I became fidgety towards the end and started to move my legs around to make sure my knees are not locked for me to fall on my face. I was really relieved when it was all over.

The decoration in the large auditorium was really quite impressive with three huge Christmas trees, a handful of smaller trees, a big fake glowing fireplace, a life-size creepy fake Santa, a wall of Christmas stockings for the contest and fancy holiday centerpieces with candles on every table. All the ceiling lights were dimmed leaving only the candles and spot lights on the walls. For a moment I really felt as if I was singing about witchcraft at Hogwarts School in Harry Potter. It was just like that one scene when the chorus sang at the beginning of the school year!

Life is all about experiences. Today was definitely a special one that you won't find anywhere else.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Spending all your time praising your Jesus I see.

Anonymous said...

Nice read dear :)