Taking the Show on the Road

Last Sunday our choir performed Arthur Honegger's "King David" at South Main. This is an ambitious choral work, complete with orchestra and dramatization. We have done it twice before, in 1989 and again in 2000. This time, we took the whole production on the road to San Antonio and performed it for the Texas Choral Directors' Association (TCDA)annual meeting. Our adventure began Tuesday morning, when Houston was beginning to get some heavy rainfall. A small bus and a van had been hired to take those of us who chose not to drive our own cars; we were scheduled to leave the church at 11:30 a.m. Unfortunately, at 11:30 we were still missing a couple of people, so we didn't actually leave until noon. Okay, that should still give us enough time to get to SA, check into our hotel, and arrive at the convention center by 4:00. Our travel plans did NOT include a stop for lunch, but our bus driver was adamant that we would have plenty of time to stop at a place that he favored on the outskirts of Houston. We tried to convince him otherwise, but he insisted that we just had to go to Sandy's for lunch (none of us had ever heard of it). It turned out to be a nice, interesting place, actually a produce market with a large, fresh salad bar. But it definitely took the hotel stop out of our itinerary. The other issue that we quickly discovered was that the bus's air condiditoning was not working. Now, if you know anything about Houston's atmosphere, you can understand that riding on a bus without air conditioning was somewhat similar to sitting in a steam room with all of our clothes on....ugh. On top of that, the bus's fumes seemed to be circulating inside the bus. Most of us had on at least part of our performance outfit, which was solid black, so we were sweltering and breathing bad air. The driver was very apologetic, saying that he'd just had the a/c worked on, but that didn't make it any cooler. We made a second stop at Buc-ee's about one hour outside of SA. A few of our bus passengers bailed and took the empty seats on the van to cool down; they told us later that the air was cooler but just as stinky, since they were following the bus on the road. We got to SA a few minutes after 4:00 (remember, we were supposed to in place at the convention center by 4), and we circled around the area while the bus driver tried to figure out the one-way streets. Finally, he dropped us off at 4:20, then we had to walk about 10 minutes to get to the ballroom where we would perform. What an ordeal! Of course, all of our anxiety proved unfounded, as we sat around and watched the crew construct the set and didn't actually rehearse until 6:00. We had just a few minutes to warm up and check the sound in the room before going backstage for Subway sandwiches. The concert started at 7:00 and was over before 8:30, after which we sat around and watched the crew deconstruct the set before riding the bus to our hotel and getting checked in. Even though we were tired, we just couldn't go to San Antonio without visiting the Riverwalk, so a group of us lit out from the hotel at 10:00 in search of dessert, which we found at a Haagen-Dazs shop on the river. Not relishing the thought of another hot bus ride, I finagled a ride back to Houston for Ben, SuEllen, and me with our hero, Sally Clark, who had driven over in her Lincoln Navigator with only one passenger. We stopped at Buc-ee's on the way back, too, and enjoyed the clean, cool air in the SUV. So now we're back at home for a few days before we head off to Nashville for Robyn's graduation.