The First Thanksgiving

It has been a week, since I posted these pictures with the somewhat cryptic post title. In doing so, I was getting ahead of myself chronologically, but these things do happen. So as I sit here almost finished with my week in Washington D.C., I will do my best to catch up. Bear with me.

So jump ahead one city after Cincinnati to Thanksgiving in Philadelphia. We arrived the day before Thanksgiving, and then had performances on the weekend. As a publicity event, the Wizard of Oz was a part of the Philadelphia Thanksgiving Parade. They actors marched or rode in a carriage, then they performed at the end of the parade route. The orchestra and cast recorded the backing track for the performance all the way back in Miami. I guess they needed time to practice their lip syncing.

Since the musicians were not a part of the parade, four of us decided to try to watch the parade performance. Well we were not able to get tickets to sit in the stands where the performances happen, but we did make an appearance along the parade route to make a scene when the Wizard folk marched by. Then after cheering and taking pictures, we met up with the parade after it turned a corner on its route to be obnoxious again. After that we ran back to the hotel so that we could watch the performance. I taped it with my camera. If I figure out how, I will post it here on the blog.

Later that day, NETworks provided us with a Thanksgiving meal at an Irish Pub close to our hotel. The meal was very good (although a little less nontraditional than I had hoped), and it was good to be with that group of people. This was my first Thanksgiving that I was not home with the family, so I felt a little sad. I mean I had to look through the Black Friday adverts all by myself. It was nice that I could be with my "touring family" though instead of just sitting in a hotel room somewhere. Christmas this year will be even less exciting as I will be flying to Newark and spending the night by the Newark Airport. Oh the joys of being a traveling performer!

Here are the highlights of the day.

Around The World In 8 Floors

On our day off, we planned an around the world party at the hotel in Cincinnati. The point of the party being to chose different countries or states, and serve drink and food unique to that region. Since Dylan our original trumpet 1 player was leaving us the day after the party we decided to chose our region to honor him. He is from Philadelphia and so we decided to have soft pretzels and drinks to honor his red hair. We did rename it Schwabadelphia after his last name. It was a crazy night which resulted in at least 4 noise complaints and one smoke alarm going off. Here are a few carefully chosen pictures:

Russia

Ryan and KC in Antarctica

Italy

Good times in Schawbadelphia

The original horn section together one last time

Everybody got a mustache in Mexico (even if they already had one)

Ryan and Beau

Residents of Mexico

Three cheesy reed players

Samurai in Japan

Sharing my gift with the world

Just for the record, I have now shared many embarassing and awkward photos that are just calling to be made into Christmas cards. I will be really disappointed if there are no humorous cards this year. Just saying!

Sweeney Todd Attends the Tale of The Wizard of Oz

The touring equivalent of a solar eclipse happened in our second week of Cincinnati. The cast of Sweeney Todd had a stopover night scheduled in Cincinnati while were still performing Wizard of Oz in town. So the company of Sweeney came to see Wizard on Thursday night, and then our company managers planned out a party for us at the Cadillac Ranch Bar. I was very excited because firstly I knew 4 people in Sweeney from Wedding Singer. Also I was the only person in the Wizard company who had actually gotten to see Sweeney Todd. And lastly the Cadillac Ranch had a mechanical bull. I did not ride the bull, but it sure made for good entertainment!

Cimma with her tuba and Merritt with his guitar

The Wedding Singers Reunite


Brett having been thrown off the bull

Ryan and Merritt (if it looks like I was holding him up, I kind of was)

Cimma and Matt

Ryan and Ruthie

Ryan and Jeff (apparently nobody else got the memo on the dress code!)

Newport

Just across the river from Cincinnati lies the strange land of Kentucky. Since there is not much to do in downtown Cincinnati, I ended up crossing the river to Newport a couple of times to amuse myself. There is an entertainment complex made up of several restaurants, a cinema, and the aquarium. I actually ended up doing a little of each.

On Friday I went to go see Bolt, the new Disney animated movie. I have faithfully seen each of the new Disney movies in the cinema for quite some years now. As often than not lately, I have ended up disappointed (The Wild, Treasure Planet), but Bolt was one of their better recent efforts. I opted for the 3D version which was worth the extra $2 in my opinion.

After seeing Bolt, I headed over to the Newport Aquarium. (I guess that this tour is going to be my Aquarium tour) The Aquarium was fine, certainly not one of the best that I have visited. The otters were very cute, and they had a few penguins. The weird thing about this Aquarium was the decorations. Now I will be the first to admit that I go overboard with my Christmas decorations, but the people at this Aquarium took their decorating way too far. Everywhere you turned there were inflatable lawn decorations, cheesy hand painted Amish Acresesque decorations, and obviously left over from Halloween a pumpkin in one of the fish tanks. They even went so far as to have a full size Santa Claus sleigh in the shark tank. I did enjoy the sharks with the Christmas wreathes hanging in the lobby though.

Where do you go to find really great back up singers?

Cincinnati and I have a history. It is a city that I have been to a few times, but have not really spent much time exploring. In high school, I was considering auditioning for the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music so Mom and I took a trip down to see the campus. After having chosen Indiana University as my college, I found myself visiting Cincinnati several times for several reasons. Firstly, it is the closest big city to Bloomington for theatre (sorry Indianapolis but you are a B market city when it come to touring shows). So I had a few trips with Eric, Melissa, and Brian to go see shows like Sunset Boulevard, Chicago, and The Music of the Night with Betty Buckley.



Secondly I played with the Singing Hoosiers for part of my time in college, and the Cincinnati Pops Orchestra used the Hoosiers for various projects. Some people might remember the infamous PBS Holiday Concert (Ho, ho, ho Brandy, and what would you like for Christmas? Let... there... be... peace... on... Earth) which was filmed at Music Hall in Cincinnati.



Out of all of my trips to Cincinnati though the one that was probably most meaningful was going to hear Eric play solo piano with the Cincinnati Pops. He was chosen by Erich Kunzel to be the soloist for the first half of the season opening concert that year (1995 maybe?). Helen Reddy was the second half. The reason that this concert was so meaningful, aside from hearing Eric's amazing performance (his Chariots of Fire will stay with me forever!), was the realization that all of the hours in the practice room could add up to something real. Here was a friend that I was in school with actually onstage with a major orchestra being featured as a solo performer. It was really inspiring especially because it is so easy to lose one's sense of perspective while at Music School. Sometimes it feels like all the work that you are putting in will amount to nothing, and Eric's concert helped me to see past that.

Returning to Cincinnati represents the first time that I have performed on tour in a venue that I have seen shows in before. It was an exciting feeling to step into the pit of the Aronoff Center and be on the other side of the wall. The Aronoff is a pretty new and modern facility which I think opened the year of our PBS Special. I remember that a bunch of us went to go see Miss Saigon at the Aronoff, and I think that may also have been the first production in that theatre. (I could be wrong though. That was 13 years ago after all!) It brought back many memories including the memory that Cincinnati audiences are some of the worst that I have ever experienced in my years of theatre going. Our audiences for Wizard did not change that view. We had less laughter, response, applause, and just general good will than any other city we have been to thus far. I guess some things will never change. Maybe it is the chili!

Oh and the title of the post is a reference to Helen Reddy's inane patter during her half of the Pops concert. Eric's impersonation of Helen Reddy is spot on just for the record!