When Steve Roe received an email last December inviting him and the Windsor United Church Choir to play Carnegie Hall, he didn’t quite believe it.
Roe, the choir’s director and church organist, opened the email from the Distinguished Concerts International New York (DCINY), saying that they had seen a video of his choir performing music by American Christian composer Mark Hayes. The organization asked if the choir be interested in singing in The Holiday Music of Mark Hayes and Pepper Choplin on Dec. 2, 2019.
“You get some of these things and you figure they’re trying to scam you somehow,” said Roe. “But I checked into it and found out that it was legit, and also there was another choir in Nova Scotia that went last year.”
In the months leading up to the concert, Roe added an extra rehearsal to the 25-member volunteer choir’s weekly schedule. With eight songs to perform, many of them more challenging than the group’s usual fare, he knew the extra work would pay off. After all, how do you get to Carnegie Hall?
Roe and his wife decided to fly down ahead of the rest of the choir, on Nov. 28, to attend a directors’ meeting Nov. 29. The weather decided otherwise.
The snow fell wet and heavy, causing a cascade of issues. Closed runways, power outages in the terminal, a stalled plane, and more kept Roe and his wife on the tarmac for four hours.
When the flight was finally cancelled around midnight, they decided to pull the plug and drive home to get some rest before trying again on Friday. Their car was, of course, snowed in at the park and fly. With every nearby hotel booked (even the flight crew were staying in a hotel an hour away), they resigned themselves to a night in the terminal.
“We knew we were going to be stranded at the airport, so I ended up sleeping on my coat in a little corner,” said Roe. “Very uncomfortable. It was cold and it was noisy and sleeping on your side on a hard floor is not too good either.”
They were at the airport long enough to greet the arriving choir members the next day. Roe and his wife managed to get out at noon. The choir themselves waited six hours as the airlines scrambled to catch up with the previous day’s cancellations.
“If we weren’t travelling to Carnegie Hall and the choir wasn’t depending on me, I would have just cancelled the flight and the trip to New York and just gone home. But there was too much riding on it,” said Roe. “The experience in New York was great. The choir was thrilled to be in rehearsals with such a notable conductor and singing with so many people in one of the best venues in the world.”
The choir joined the rest of the 250-member ensemble performing Hayes’ music and were conducted by Hayes himself. After months of practice, 30 hours of delay, and wondering if the trip would even happen, Roe says the experience was still worth it.
“It was, I think, a worthwhile learning experience for the choir, and nice working with the rest of the 250 singers or so that we were singing with. It was quite a good trip overall,” he said. “You do kind of forget about the 30-hour stayover once the fatigue wears off.”
