Making it to Carnegie Hall

I made it to Carnegie Hall!

Yes, I performed at Carnegie Hall!

Perhaps that doesn't have the impact it once did, but it used to be pretty special to say you made it to Carnegie Hall in New York City.

For two years, I was in the University of Michigan Men's Glee Club.  It was a very prestigious organization, having won the International Men's Glee Cub Competition a year or two before I joined.

It was a bit of a fluke that I got accepted.  The student director of the band was a Bridgeport High School alum who had been a year ahead of me in school.  His first name was Mark, but I have forgotten his last name.  He was big in the school band, and had remembered my musical performance in Superman, and my freakishly high audition song of Somewhere Over the Rainbow, which I sang a couple octaves too high.

They needed first tenors, and he encouraged me to try out.  You were required to know how to sight read, which I could not, but they were so desperate for high tenors, that they kind of waved that requirement.  And for better or worse, I could definitely sing up there in the clouds.

The group would tour the country each year, and we would perform at different venues.  We did one tour to the Mid-Atlantic, New York City and New England, and another tour to the South.  It was my first trip to Atlanta, and we performed at Ebenezer Baptist Church, the church where Martin Luther King, Jr. had preached.

There are many stories of my time on these trips, some of them quite wild.  But this one is about my quasi-triumphant debut at Carnegie Hall.

We did a huge variety of songs, from many genres and types, including Broadway.  That year we did Gee, Officer Krupke from West Side Story.  In the song, several 'juveniles' take the role of  different people trying to explain the bad behavior of the gang members to policeman Officer Krupke.  I sang the last one.  I sang it as if I were a 63 year old female social worker.

I am lousy at remembering lyrics, but these stand out to me.  What I sang:

Gee, Officer Krupke, you've done it again!
This boy don't need a job - he needs a year in the pen!
It ain't just a question of misunderstood
Deep down inside him - he's no good!

It was done in a very high voice, with the crag and rhythm of an elderly female New Yorker, ending in a loud shriek.  The audience ate it up.  They interrupted the song to applaud me, the only time in the concert that they applauded before the song was over.

I knew something important had happened, but I was too young to fully absorb it.  Yes, it was a bit of a fluke.  It was my comedy and daring that they were applauding, not my tremendous singing talent. But it was special enough.

That night, we returned to our hotel rooms.  The others in my room must have went out, and I was left alone.  And I was hit with an overwhelming sadness and depression. I had this great moment, and there was no one from home to share it with.  I think I may have tried to call home, but this was in the day before cells, and hotels in New York City charged a small fortune to call out.  So my parents did not see it.  No one from home did.  I had a girlfriend that was slipping away, and I couldn't impress her with what I did.

I had reached the pinnacle of my young life, and I was lost.  What did it all mean?  I did not know.  Right or wrong, I cried alone in my room.

It was a big, emotional moment, but I felt alone and unable to figure out how to share it, or follow up on it.  What do I do next?  Or was that it?  Was that as big as I got?

As I've aged, I have enjoyed many times that connection with an audience.  No, I've never done anything truly "big" with it. Oftentimes, when a play is done, I still go through that same let down.  I don't entirely know why.

You won't find me on TV or the movies.  I will almost certainly never get back to Carnegie Hall.

But I was there once.

For one brief shining moment, I was there.