It seems appropriate to start the tour adventures with Commencement Choir, that one wonderful time of the year when the Holden Choruses exist together in harmony, with no classes, tests, or stress. The Glee Club (and RCS and Collegium) sing at Commencement come rain or shine, tour year or no - and it seems fitting to honor that tradition with inclusion here in this journal.

I should also take a moment to introduce myself. I am Peter Lifland, 2nd year member of the Harvard Glee Club and sophomore at Harvard College. I am the current technology manager of the Glee Club, and the Secretary-elect. I concentrate in computer sciences, but usually sing for more hours per week than I have classes. In this journal, I intend to document, as best I can, my experience on this great tour, as well as capturing part of the overall Glee Club experience. It should be a great adventure.

Move-in day is always a drag. Everyone has to pack up almost all of their stuff and move it out of their rooms by noon. However, the houses don't start assigning rooms until 1PM, so everyone moves twice - once to a courtyard and then again to the assigned rooms. This year, the Glee Club got lucky in terms of housing: everyone was assigned to be in Leverett F tower. And, the lovely ladies of RCS, as well as the remaining portions of Collegium were assigned to nearby G tower. The Leverett towers have large, spacious rooms, even if they do feel a little like prison cells. This is one of the nicest housing situations that Commencement Choir has had in years.

After everyone was moved in, the small festivities began. Some people napped, some people worked, but for the most part, the Holden Choruses began to bond in ways we don't do throughout the year. Personally, I went with some friends to a barbeque held at a nearby ex-Holdenite house. The barbeque was small and relaxed, with food that beat any of the Marvincue fare.

To celebrate the beginning of Commencement Choir, there was, of course, a pan- Holden party. Coincidentally, the day was also the 21st birthday of Glee Club Secretary. He had made elaborate plans to christen the auspicious occasion of his first step into the world of alcohol. To this regard, he arranged to grab one of the largest suites in Harvard, Leverett F-20 and opened it up for the party. All of Holden was invited, as was the Harvard Band. Party supplies included a large bar setup, and a table painted with the Glee Club and Band crests. Needless to say, the party was a great way for everyone to celebrate the ending of classes, and the beginning of the road to a great tour. And, it generated some great scenes and quotes. Only one day into Commencement Choir, and already the good times roll.

Memorable quotes, events, and people:

"Can Lite revive the cartoon medley?"
"Well, Robby will object, but if I smother him with a pillow..." - President Quentin Sedlacek about Manager/Conductor Robby Griffin

"Where's my water?" - a very drunk Secretary to many party-goers, particularly Nora Barr

"You always hit me! Why do you always hit me?!" - a prostrate Secretary to Robby Griffin

The first full day of Commencement Choir was a great day for me. While many members were sleeping off the excesses of the birthday party, a small group of Holdenites, including me, went out to Manchester-by-the-Sea, in a delightful trip that included wonderful hosting by the Roller family and a trip to the beach!

The weather was beautiful - cloudless with a balmy high of 81 degrees. Everything was beautiful from the ride in Ellie's zipcar to the gorgeous New England town of Manchester-by-the-Sea. Even the Memorial Day parade that we got stuck behind was enjoyable. But nothing beat lying on the beach in 70+ degree sunshine. The coastline was breathtaking, the sand was warm, and the company was peaceful. All in all, a perfect beach day.

After returning from Manchester-by-the-Sea, it was time for the first meeting of the Harvard Glee Club Bridge Club. As 3 out of the 5 members were staying in F-20, the meeting was easy. The other 2 were not in Cambridge, so we recruited a band member to be our fourth. It was a heated match, but despite a rally at the end, the Glee Club team was able to beat the mixed couple. Order was maintained.

The night wound down with a showing of Ironman in F-20, courtesy of a friend of William Skinner. The movie was good, the company was better, and it was a fine end to a rather spectacular day of rest in the Commencement world.

Sadly, after several days of leisure, the time had come to rejoin the Glee Club in rehearsal. Actually, truth be told, many people were looking forward to rehearsing again. We had just come off a phenomenal 150th concert, and I, among others, was looking forward to recreating such an amazing sound.

The rehearsal was not precisely smooth sailing. We sounded good, and blended relatively well, but the rust we had gained in even a few short weeks of finals showed. We were not helped by a couple of hitches in the process that threatened to derail rehearsal. The first of these was lackluster attendance. Because of the sheer length of our upcoming tour, many guys chose to go home after finals, to spend some much-needed time with their families. As such, not everyone could make it back in time for our first rehearsal. This would not have been too much of a problem, but it was magnified by two factors. First, Jim was in fine form, flustered by attendance issues as always. Second, while we had 13/13 1st tenors, 11/14 baritones, and 11/13 basses - we had only 7/15 2nd tenors. This created huge balance issues that persisted throughout the rehearsal. Thankfully, Jim somehow got it into his head that only three 2nd tenors were absent, at which point he stopped stressing. Crisis was averted through misinformation and clever talk by our Secretary, Harker Rhodes.

Once rehearsal was underway, it went well. Everyone is excited. Up until now we have always been motivated and excited by the 150th concert. With the concert behind us, tour feels imminent, and it showed in our sound. People paid great attention, and our group volume was impressive. Everyone was even in good humor, and Jim's zaniness and silly comments inspired a lot of laughter and revelry. Even Jim's revision of his piece for the 1000th time this year (see left) was taken in good - if a little silly - spirit.

After rehearsal the day was relatively uneventful, with the exception of another meeting of the Harvard Glee Club Bridge Club. All five members were back in town, and we had two Gleeks who were interested in learning, Kelby Russell and Douglas Quirke. As such, we picked up Zimmerman again to be our eighth, and broke into two bridge games, a first for our club. It was a fun time, and at least one recruit was converted.

Memorable quotes, events, and people:

"Why would you say 'what?!' when I'm being so incredibly precise?" - Jim Marvin

"Why is it sharp?" - Jim
"It ends in another key!" - Assistant Conductor Michael McGaghie

"I don't know this piece" - Jim on Cantantes Licet Usque Eamus, his own composition

"2nd tenor, are you singing that ornament? It's just not heard." - Jim
"It shall be." - Toby McDougal, a baritone

Apology to my readers: I decided that this blog should really be about our amazing tour and not about the times of Harvard Commencement, however fun they may be. If I have a significant bit of downtime, I may go back and 'retro-post' more details, particularly about the Farewell to Cambridge concert, but for now I have decided to skip ahead until tour. Many apologies to any and everyone who checked this blog in the past week. From now on, updates should come in at least every other day, internet access permitting.

Leaving for a summer tour is a bit of a debacle. Seniors have to move out of their houses, while everyone else moves out of the bridge housing provided by the university. Meanwhile, everyone's time is consumed by Commencement. The seniors are, of course, the focus of the festivities, but the rest of us are singing, and therefore have to wake up for a 6.45 AM Commencement rehearsal. After the long exercises and completing moving, the Glee Club returned to relax, only to have an email proclaiming that we were meeting at 3 AM that morning to leave for dear. No rest for the weary indeed.

The traveling itself was not particularly pleasant. Almost no one had gotten any sleep, and AirTran, our cheap airline of choice - is an unpleasant option in the best of circumstances. I suspect I was actually one of the most well-rested Gleeks, as I skipped the afternoon Commencement exercises (and J.K. Rowling's speech, more's the pity), to nap from 4-9 PM on Thursday afternoon. Still, even I was very tired and grumpy, and AirTran's terrible service, coupled with extra-small seats, and long lines was not a good experience. However, we did eventually arrive in Phoenix at 11.30 PST, finally beginning the good portions of tour.

Kelby is a wonderful tour manager, but he definitely runs a packed schedule. We ate lunch quickly at the airport in order to make a 1 PM tour of the Arizona Diamondbacks' stadium. It was actually a really amazing facility. Completed in 1998, it was really well-designed, with a lot of cool features - particularly for the purpose of combatting Phoenix's deadly heat. Our tour-guides were fun, enthusiastic, and very knowledgeable, with lots of interesting stories, facts, and numbers at their fingertips. If I may quickly recap a couple of the cooler features of the stadium that were presented to us: (1) The almost ungodly workings of their cooling system. Apparently they freeze a block of ice in a nearby refrigerating complex the size of a school gymnasium and use its melting runoff to cool the stadium. They can cool it 30 degrees in a couple hours! (2) There is a pool on one end of the outfield. It's a really nice swimming pool with two lifeguards. One watches the swimmers while the other keeps his eye out for fly balls coming into the pool area. Pretty amazing.

After our tour, we reboarded our bus, then went for a two-hour rehearsal in our concert space. The space was lovely and the sound is quite good. The major acoustical difficulty is that the stage is quite small, forcing us to stand fairly close together. This makes blending slightly harder, surprisingly, creating a more 'dense' sound. We were not really ready for a two hour rehearsal right after our sleepless nights and plane flights, but thankfully Kevin was conducting, and while he did use the full two hours, he tried to be as easy as possible on our voices, with a lot of warmups and small vocal breaks. Nevertheless, by the end of rehearsal, about 1/5 of the Glee Club had lost its voice, mainly due to the complicating factor of dehydration.

After rehearsal, we went to a nice Mexican restaurant, the Comedor Guadalajara. The family of Tim Reckart, an Arizona native, joined us for dinner. They even ended up hiring the small mariachi band to come sing for us. It was very sweet. The food was good, although no one had trouble with the spice of it, which had been hyped up a little before hand. The chips and salsa were particularly loved by many, and water was clearly the beverage of choice. Dehydration requires strong, immediate action.

After dinner we again boarded the bus to go to a reception put on by our main contact here in Phoenix. The reception was very nice, with tasty desserts and drinks, and the opportunity to meet and chat with many of our hosts. By this point the entire Glee Club was keeling over from exhaustion, however, so after about an hour people started to head home to crash for the night with their hosts. Our schedule has us meeting at 8.30 in the morning... we'll see how that goes. Lite sang at the reception as a thank you to our hosts, and a teaser of the concert to come. We sang Bear Necessities, and as Chase had yet to arrive in Phoenix, I got to sing the solo. That was fun. A little girl (presumably one of our hosts' daughters) ran out and attacked me with a lightsabre mid-song. It was great fun and very cute.

With this related, it is definitely time for me to go to bed. If anything, tomorrow's schedule is more packed than today's. Tour better wind down a little soon, or everyone will go insane long before six weeks are up. Hopefully that's what our upcoming stay near the Grand Canyon is for.

Memorable quotes, events, and people:

Our hilarious bus driver - the long drives look to be a lot more interesting

Watching Gleeks swing and do pull ups on Randy Johnson's 'backstretching bar'

"You can't get caught boffing the cleaning lady there either" - our stadium tour-guide, speaking about the glass walls of the President's office

"Tortilleria. That's what you get when you eat too many tortillas." - Michael McGaghie on an unfortunate restaurant name.

At first glance, the itinerary for Saturday was rather intimidating. At 8.30 AM we had a tour of the Desert Botanical Gardens. From there we went to a two hour barbeque and pool party. After the party, we had two hours in a Native American art museum. Then, after an hour for dinner, we had rehearsal and, of course, our concert! While Kelby may or may not be insane for planning schedules this full, to his credit, the day came off beautifully. There was a wonderful mixture of uptime and downtime, and we all went to the concert happy and refreshed. Amazing man.

The Desert Botanical Gardens were a fun, quick experience. We broke up into two groups and had guided tours through the premises. My group's guide was a little quirky, but very knowledgeable about the desert and its plantlife. He bombarded us with a barrage of information and factoids about everything from Saguaros (apparently pronounced "Sah - war - oh" by native Arizonans) to Agave, the tequila plant. The gardens had some rather impressive cacti, but they were very hot and sunny, even at 8.30 in the morning. As a result, most of our time there after the tour was spent in the giftshop, which had lot of entertaining items, including beautiful postcards, jalepeno-flavored candy, and lots of animal puppets.

The pool party and barbeque was an amazing way to relax and cool down after the hot gardens. The party was hosted by a Harvard Club family, in a wonderful house with an absolutely amazing pool and hot tub. One of the Harvard Club people used to manage the Quincy Grille, and it showed in the delicious fare grilled up for us, including massive hamburgers, sausages, chicken tenders, boca burgers, and more. The food was so appetizing that despite the heat, almost everyone chose to postpone swimming and eat a huge lunch first. Eventually however, the Glee Club did get into the pool. The pool prompted a variety of amusing games, including our own version of Marco Polo, a very intense basketball game in the shallow end, and a belly flop contest. Gleeks who didn't want to swim lounged in the shade, hanging out or reading books (a surprisingly popular pasttime for Harvard students during the summer). At the end, we gave our hosts a well-deserved thanks in the form of singing New Britain (Amazing Grace) on their back porch, which actually had an amazing acoustic.

The next stop was the Heard Museum, which featured Native American art. There were some very cool exhibits. One of the best parts is that most of the art was made from natural materials. There was for instance, a sculpture carved from a gigantic walrus tusk, and a set of earrings made out of beetle skins. Also deserving mention was the Navajo Hogan, which was a well-built small wooden cabin. GleeClubHouse, anyone?

Dinner happened in the Ranch Market, which is half supermarket, half mexican food court. The food was good, with aqua fresca (very good juice/water mix) and a myriad of interesting mexican food items, including a special variant of hotdog which our bus driver had warned us about. Just as a taste of what this hotdog was like:
Step 1: take a hotdog
Step 2: wrap it in bacon
Step 3: smother it in mustard, ketchup, jalepeno, and as many other things as you can think of
Step 4: eat
Needless to say, this hotdog was not my cup of tea. However, many Gleeks enjoyed it, which is a bad sign for our next plane flight being able to get off the ground. Mmm... bus rides and hotdogs wrapped in bacon...

The concert in the evening was, of course, the highlight of the day. We sang mainly under Kevin's baton, although Mike conducted the Argento and Sacramento. We sounded quite good, and had a full audience of about 500 people, which filled the church pews. Here's a quick rundown of the concert:
First half - Caritas Abundat into Agnus Dei, Sanctus into Sicut Cervus, Argento II & III
Second half - Ne sedi Djemo, Shenkhar, Arirang, Glorious Apollo, Why Georgia (Lite),
Hallelujah (Lite), Sacramento, Lowlands, Football Songs, New Britain (encore)
The acoustic was a bit strange. We sounded very well blended and resonant from out the audience, but that was not the experience onstage. It was very hard to hear out farther than about a two person radius, and perhaps not that much if you were standing next to soft singers. This resulted in a sound that was amazing from the audiences' perspective, but very hard for us to produce as an ensemble. As a result, both our precision and pitch were not quite on during the concert. Many of our pieces went out of key (although we did, of course, stay in key relative to each other. The key just migrated a bit), and some inprecise entrances, rhythms, and cutoffs. Also a little off-putting was the fact that all four of our opening pieces were performed much slower than we were used to under Jim, which made them feel more lethargic and gave them less energy. Singing Rennaissance music slowly can really expose the beautiful harmonies packed inside, but it makes it much harder to sing with line and direction. Still, I do not wish to make it sound like the concert was a flop or a downer in any way. We had a large audience who absolutely loved us, and we sang many songs really quite well. And those we didn't are in better shape for it. We got not one, but two standing ovations, and they were not entirely undeserved.

Before I end this submission, I would like to throw in a few fun comments on the concert. It is amazing how different pieces can be under different conductors, even if those conductors use the same general interpretation. There is absolutely nothing that compares to singing the Argento under Mike, or Lowlands under Kevin. Mike knows the Argento inside and out, and he constantly shares with us further discoveries into its inner self that he has made. As a result of this and his clear passion for the piece, he can evoke highs and lows in it which even Jim never achieves. Kevin's situation with Lowlands is somewhat different. His interpretation of line resonates in the Glee Club more than any other, and pieces with the dramatic high emotional moment that Lowlands has simply enter another sphere under his baton. It is truly a treat when the conductor matches the piece so well, and I appreciated this concert all the more because of it.

Memorable quotes, events, and people:

One of the alums who came up to sing with us (I didn't catch his name, unfortunately) was the manager of the Glee Club during its centennial year in 1958!

Our bus driver's 'Dashboard of Shame'. Trash after one day? Really? Really.

"Hello, I'm friendly Phil, the decent docent" - a clearly insane tour guide at the botanical gardens

At a stoplight: "There's a lomborgini in front of us. Should we make it nervous?" - our bus driver. And yes, he proceeded to make it nervous.

"Haugen... STERN!!" - the new Glee Club version of Marco Polo (the pool game)

"It's supposed to be an E major chord with an F stuck in it. Like someone poking you in the face." - Michael McGaghie on a chord in the Argento

Sunday marked the first of many long bus rides on the tour. We drove up from Phoenix to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon, which would be about a seven hour ride in our bus. The bus ride actually went relatively quickly for me. As the first bus ride, it featured fun events such as the President's reading of the 'Rules of the Road', and the singing of 'Bernie's a Roach', the alternate lyrics to our football song Yo Ho, which is lovingly sung whenever Bernie Kreger rides on the bus with us rather than following in a tail car. We also had the first movie on tour, which was chosen by Vice President Chase Mohney, Blues Brothers. Personally, I played about five rubbers of bridge with various partners. It was great fun, particularly because I happened to land good cards fairly consistently, and managed to win all five rubbers. It really helped to make the bus ride fly on by.

The Grand Canyon itself was absolutely incredible. While the North Rim turned out to not be the best place to watch the sunset, the views themselves were breathtaking enough that sunset wasn't a let down at all. There were a couple small paths, which led from amazing view to amazing view. The sights were truly awe-inspiring. I estimate that the Glee Club probably took a combined 3,000+ pictures of the Grand Canyon while we were there. I personally ended up taking about 80, although thankfully I regained my senses after a while and started only taking pictues which involved people as well as a view. Uploading the Glee Club's combined pictures after tour is going to be a phenomenal task, I sincerely hope that our server is up for the strain. It should be, but it will certainly be an adventure.

The Grand Canyon also served as the location for the first EC meeting of tour, which convened on top of a precipice with a 270 degree view. Without doubt it was one of the most majestic EC locations in Glee Club's history. Speaking of precipices, several Gleeks were rather too adventurous, at least for other's comfort, in exploring the Rim. Allan Bradley, in particular, frightened several Gleeks and non-Gleeks by sitting on a ledge dangling out over the Canyon. When he started leaning forward to see the view, myself and several others had to go to a different area of the canyon in order to manage our own fears. In the end, however, he was perfectly fine, as were the other adventurous Gleeks - Alan Baik, Samuel Crihfield, Kevin Davies, and Joseph Tofte.

After sunset we left the Rim and drove half an hour north to our campsite for the night. We literally camped out in sleeping bags on the cold, hard ground. Eui Choi had brought a tent, but everyone else was left without even an air mattress. The night started well - we got two strong fires going, and were roasting marshmallows. Our bus driver managed to convince another camping group to drive him to the nearby hotel where he was staying, so that we could have the bus overnight at the campsite to store our stuff. In order to accomplish this, Lite sang to the three women campers (college age) who gave him the lift. These women later came and joined us at our fires, creating a very amusing social dynamic of 50 males and 3 females. There was plenty of beer flowing, and while I was exhausted and went to sleep at about 11, I heard several amusing stories in the morning involving drunk Gleeks and a nearby horse in a pasture. As far as I can tell, the horse won any and all confrontations.

The night itself turned out to be an adventure. None of us had any insulation, we slept right on the cold, cold ground. The night, much to our surprise, became very chilly. In fact, it reached 30 degrees, which froze several water bottles. Everybody was freezing and was constantly being woken by the cold. About a quarter of the Glee Club chose to relocate and sleep on the bus, which while uncomfortable, was at least warmer. Personally, I just toughed it out and froze. My feet did not appreciate this decision, despite being in a sleeping bag with several pairs of socks on. Despite the cold, however, I still managed to sleep more than any other night on tour - although I'd doubt this was the case for anyone else.

The next day was relatively uneventful. We woke up with the sun and got on the bus for our second seven hour drive, this time up to Salt Lake City via the gorgeous Zion National Park. Zion was amazing, particularly the mile long tunnel through a mountain, which had windows carved into the side revealing truly gorgeous vistas. Beyond this, the bus ride was relatively uneventful, with a lot of sleeping, two movies (Mean Girls and Kung Fu Hustle), and several more rubbers of bridge (which sadly I did not win). We arrived in Salt Lake at around 6 PM, where we immediately were picked up and sent home with hosts. Essentially, we had the whole evening to relax in a hosting atmosphere - it was a great break. My hosts are quite nice, and have two small children (4 and 6) who are absolutely adorable. But that is a story for another entry.

Memorable quotes, events, and people:

"You should have told them you were there getting a sex change." - Robby Griffin after a story about Will Skinner's bank froze his card when he called to verify his card in Syria
"From what to what?" - our bus driver

"Here is the true Glee Club at trough." - Josh Baiel after three college women walked into our campsite

"I didn't even hear what is was. It just sounded like a dying crow." - Nat Katz on Matt McClure and Kurt Nehrcorn's singing on the bus at 9 AM

Tuesday was another packed day, but only for Lite members. Lite had the opportunity to sing on television - we were given a three minute spot on the local morning news show, Good Day Utah. While this was great publicity and quite an interesting experience, it also entailed waking up at 6 AM in order to perform live on air at 8.30. All in all though it went pretty well. We wore our dinner jackets (although with multicolor bowties) and sang Wouldn't it be Nice, which was especially exciting for me as I had arranged the piece for Lite. There were a few wrinkles that we weren't expecting. First, they asked us for a one minute live interview. Thankfully, Chase stepped up to the task and handled the interview quite well. Second, they stopped our piece about two minutes in. Apparently, the unasked for interview counted as part of our three minute airtime. According to the non-Lite members of Glee Club who watched this morning, they cut us off at a good place, so it worked out fine. All in all, it was an interesting experience and good publicity.

After the Lite 'gig', we got on the bus, picked up interested Glee Club members and then went to several interesting places in Salt Lake City. We briefly visited a monument standing where Joseph Smith looked over the land and said 'This is the place'. Then we drove by many Olympic highlights, including the massive ski jumps, which were really quite impressive. Lastly, we headed up to the touristy town of Park City where we hung out for a couple hours and grabbed lunch. We just visited the long and historic Main Street, which was actually very peaceful and nice if you ignored the one or two touristy aspects. Thomas ended up befriending the elderly owner of a local coffee shop, who ended up treating him to a 45 minute meal. By the end they had exchanged contact information, in case she ever came to Denmark. Personally, I walked the length of Main Street a couple times, and ended up going out to a delicious lunch with a number of Gleeks. More than half the group was over 21, and they chose the restaurant which had the best beer selection and tried out the available brews, with a couple even taking notes. As I abstain - and am not 21 in any case - I could only watch, but it was actually pretty fun to observe. I believe that the general consensus was the the Full Suspension was the best, and that the Polygamy Porter simply had too much going on. Thankfully, the 'Devastator', which was a special brew with 8% alcohol content was only available in small quantities, so everyone stayed sober for rehearsal and the concert that evening.

At 1 we left Park City to drive back for rehearsal in our venue, the Cathedral of the Madeiline. It felt a little odd to be singing at a Roman Catholic Cathedral in the middle of Salt Lake City, but the venue turned out to be gorgeous. Jim was supposed to fly in and make the rehearsal, but his plane was held up for mechanical reasons, so he didn't make it. This probably was a good thing, as Jim would have been cranky right off the plane, and the rehearsal was a challenge. The main issue was the acoustics. The Cathedral was gorgeous, but was also designed for massive reverb. Every note we sang came back with a huge echo. Even our warmups were confusing, after every small scale or arpeggio we would still hear the last one while we started the new one. After warming up a bit, Kevin had us sing a chord at forte and then cut us off while timing the echo. The echo lasted just over five seconds! All of our fast pieces were deep sixed, and many of our other pieces had to be taken at a much slower tempo in the space, otherwise they turned to mud. The pieces that did work, however, worked amazingly. For instance, the Gomidas Sanctus, a stately and beautiful piece, was transformed into a stunning work of art by the acoustics.

Jim showed up right at the tail end of our two-hour rehearsal, which gave him a chance to hear the space. He decided to go with the concert Kevin had planned, and was in general very relaxed and pleasant, despite the acoustic and his delayed flight. He released us for dinner right about on time. After dinner, we returned and had a Lite soundcheck followed by a soundcheck with Jim, to let him get used to the space with us. After all the soundchecks, we put on our concert. It was a solid concert. The echo blended over many tuning errors and note mistakes in a way which we don't usually benefit from. We were not as solid technically as we have been in the past this year, but we were happy to be singing under Jim, and the emotional component of our performance was there in spades. Lowlands in particular had more emotion and melancholy than I have ever seen in the piece. And, of course, our slower repertoire blossomed in the space, including the Sanctus and the opening Caritas Abundat chant. All in all, it was a very solid concert before a nice audience of about 400. The ending was a little anticlimactic, however. We had a possible encore of New Britain (Amazing Grace), which would have sounded absolutely phenomenal in the space. However, Lowlands, our second to last piece, was so impressive that the audience gave it a standing ovation, which precluded long clapping at the end and the encore. Oh well.

After the concert we went to a lovely reception at a local home. And by home, I mean mansion. The house was amazing - it was huge with an amazing view of Salt Lake and a basement which included (among other things) a ping pong room, a weight room, and a squash court. While I had to leave early, I still stayed long enough to be impressed. It was quite a house, and I feel like I only saw the tip of the iceberg.

We are spending another day in Salt Lake City tomorrow, doing more of the sightseeing that we haven't really gotten around to yet, including a tour of some parts of the Tabernacle. It should be great fun. In fact, our next concert isn't until Sunday, in Great Falls. I for one, appreciate the vocal break. We're only five days into tour, and already my voice is tired. Ah well, the singing is definitely worth it.

Memorable quotes, events, and people:

"The Most Unfiercest Viking" - Michael Pankratz's title for Kurt Nehrcorn

"I saw Rihanna and Kanye West last night. I'm a changed man. She was HOT!" - Michael McGaghie

"Argento, ento, ento." - Michael McGaghie
"Eh Eh Eh." - Glee Club

"I asked what the side effects were of the shots I had and he said 'pain'." - Adam Clark, on his rabies shots

"The problem is I want to have a three hour rehearsal right now. I'll just go have one by myself." - Jim, 45 minutes before the concert

Before I dive into the day's sightseeing, I feel like I should describe my hosting experience so far on this tour. In Phoenix Marco Chan and I stayed with an old retired couple in a nice suburb of Phoenix - Paradise Valley. The hosting was nice, relatively close to our dropoff point. We each got our own room, and we were served two delicious breakfasts of homegrown grapefruit and homemade waffles. Our stay was a little awkward, however, as our hosts were huge John McCain afficionados, and kept bringing up topics such as "isn't this place nice? Why would anyone want change?". Mildly awkward.

My hosting experience here in Salt Lake City is the opposite of that in just about every way. I am staying with Sam Crihfield in a very small house. The house is owned by a recent Harvard graduate (1992) and her small family. They are very liberal and huge Obama fans. We spend most of our time playing with their 4 and 6 year old children, and we are sleeping on an air mattress and the couch in their small family room. The children are very sweet; I was woken up this morning at 8.20 with a hug from Paul, a little four-year-old boy. Probably the most amazing moment of my day. I miss children - they're the best things in the world.

Our visit to the center of Mormonism was quite nice. We were given a guided tour of the new convention center (the Tabernacle Choir's summer home), the Tabernacle itself, and then visited the assembly hall where Glee Club had sung 10 years ago. We sang in all three places. The convention center was huge, seating 21,000 people, and our sound was just swallowed by the dry acoustics. It was very easy to hear each other, however - it would have made an ideal recording location. The Tabernacle was still large but much smaller, it was fun to pretend to be their choir for a bit. Even so, our small numbers (relative to the Tabernacle Choir's 380) definitely showed. The assembly hall, however, had clearly been built with a group more of our size in mind. It was a really nice acoustic, and we absolutely stunned a visiting tour group with Slava - particularly the loud climactic chords.

After the tour, we were given six hours to explore downtown Salt Lake, before meeting for a barbeque dinner. I went to a nice cafe, the Nauvoo for lunch, where I tried a 'coca-cola porkloin' sandwich. Apparently, the preparation for this involves soaking porkloin in a mixture of Coke and brown sugar for three days. I couldn't taste the Coke, but the meat was definitely sweet. It was interesting, and more palatable than I had expected. After lunch I went back to the Tabernacle to hear an organ concert. The Tabernacle's organ was really impressive, and the acoustics of the hall were clearly designed to make it even more so. The organist was good, although I didn't like several of his arrangements. He did, however, play an arrangement of 'Nimrod' from Elgar's Enigma Variations, which was absolutely spectacular. It was a magnificent and solemn piece played in a great acoustic - a very moving experience. Afterwards, I spent a lot of time wandering around. I visited the heritage library, both visitor centers, and the downtown mall. The barbeque was also nice. It was very low-key. Food was served, but there was nothing else to do except sit, talk, and admire the view of Salt Lake City (the barbeque was in a very nice club in the hills above the city). As a result, we just unwound a bit and talked, which was a great experience. Eventually three circles of cards appeared, a bridge table, a rummy table, and a poker table. Even Jim sat down to play some rummy! It was a lot of fun.

Memorable quotes, events, and people:

"Wake up! There are muffins!" - Paul Florence, my four-year-old host

"You stay there!!" - Jim to the elevator doors closing in on him

"There are two rules for the future Mrs. Rhodes.
(1) That she will raise our children Episcopalian
(2) That she is willing to name her first son Charles Harker Rhodes V" - Charles Harker Rhodes IV

We left Salt Lake in high spirits. We now had almost our full tour complement, as Jim, Ryaan Ahmed, Philip Hafferty, and Adam Clark joined us. Beyond that, we had five days to go before our next singing requirement. Some people (most vocally Jim, but also several singers) even suggested adding another rehearsal, just to make this week seem more like tour and less like vacation. Not that vacation is a bad thing! Especially with 60 of your friends along.

The drive from Salt Lake to Jackson was another long seven-hour slog. We scheduled a lot of these, apparently. That said, it was through a very scenic area of the country, and we distracted ourselves with the presentation of the Salt Lake City blat (stories about Glee Club's adventures on tour collected and presented by our Vice President, Chase Mohney) and the movie Ghostbusters. We made two stops, one for lunch at the Bluebird restaurant, and one for smoothies at some stands on the borders of raspberry fields. The smoothies were delicious, with fresh raspberries, but the Bluebird was a disaster. Although the restaurant could seat us (and many more), it was very slow service for what turned out to be mediocre food. We originally intended to make an hour stop, but as it turned out, several people hadn't even been served by the time the hour rolled around. Oops! That's not a stop we'll remake soon.

The bus dropped us off in the town of Jackson for dinner. The town was quite nice, rather small but very scenic and peaceful. A good portion of the Glee Club ended up going to a thai restaurant which is apparently quite renowned. As I have heard, the food there was amazing, but very, very spicy - causing many of those who couldn't take the heat to fill their stomachs with water rather than food. Personally, I really wanted to see game four of the Celtics-Lakers championship series, so I spent a long time wandering around town, looking for somewhere to eat with a TV. This was much harder than it should have been, as I couldn't go to a bar (being 20) and the steakhouses were really, really pricy. I ended up finding a very small mexican restaurant with a TV, where eventually all of the under 21 sports fans in the Glee Club gathered to watch the game. After dinner we met the bus and traveled to Hostel X, which the Glee Club was staying at thanks to the recommendation of Harker Rhodes and William Skinner, who stayed here last summer. The hostel is actually really nice, and is also in a calm and beautiful town. As a last bonus, there is a bar (the Mangy Moose) about 100 feet from the hostel, which our older members thoroughly enjoyed.

The real treat of Wyoming, however, was our free day in Jackson on Friday the 13th. We used the bus as a shuttle, going back and forth between the hostel, Jackson, and the Grand Teton National Park. People were free to either sleep, explore a wonderful area, or spend time in Jackson. Gleeks organized several bigger events as well. Walker Stanovsky planned and led a very serious hike through the Tetons, which involved waking up for the 8 AM shuttle and hiking until the last shuttle at 6 PM. Another group of Gleeks organized a white-water rafting expedition, which sounds to have been an absolutely amazing experience. For the less ambitious, there were many great hikes around Jenny Lake in the Tetons, with absolutely spectacular scenery. The day was a great opportunity, and I think everyone took advantage of it.

Personally, I opted to get my first real night of sleep on tour, and woke up just in time for the noon shuttle. I went to Jenny Lake, and ended up taking a six mile hike around the lake and up to a waterfall and Inspiration Point, which was on a mountain near the lake, giving an absolutely breathtaking view of the lake. From start to finish the hike was almost perfect. There weren't many tourists, the skies were mostly clear, and the weather stayed in the ideal high 50s. The views of and around the lake were spectacular. The lake water was perfectly clear, and the views of the nearby snowcapped mountains were always breathtaking. We even saw some wildlife - including many birds and what we tentatively identified as a muskrat. One particularly cool find was a spider dealing with a fly that had been caught in its web. That is something which I had never actually seen in practice before - it was quite cool to watch. After the hike, everyone met for the last shuttle back to Jackson, where most people chose to eat dinner. I ate at a local pizza establishment, Mountain High Pie, which was quite good. After dinner, everyone caught the shuttle back to the hostel, where we spent a peaceful evening. We have decided, which is to say that our tour manager has decided, to revise our schedule and wake up very early on Saturday, in order to detour a bit and drive through Yellowstone in Montana. I am not excited for the wake-up call, but am definitely excited to see the scenery. So far on tour, the natural landscapes have certainly not disappointed - it has been one great view after another since we left the concrete city of Phoenix. I have now seen many places which I fully intend to revisit and share with my family later. What a marvelous part of the trip.

Memorable quotes, events, and people:

The scenery. All of it has been absolutely breathtaking.

"It's the kind of movie that Jim Marvin would put down his music to watch." - Michael McGaghie

"A good rule - never play a philosophy major in chess." - Matthew McClure

Late night Friday, our illustrious tour manager made the executive decision to wake up earlier and modify our bus-route to pass through Yellowstone national park. This decision was not made lightly, as it involved waking people up in order to tell them that they were going to lose several hours of sleep that they had presumably been planning on. That said, everyone was quickly informed, and the unscheduled early departure went off without a hitch, except for the major exception that we neglected to inform Toby McDougal, who was staying at the friends, rather than at the hostel. As a result he had to find his own way up to Great Falls, MT. Oopsies. Still, he arrived in Great Falls safely and in time for the concert, so no real harm done.

The rest of us all prepared for yet another long, long bus drive. We made several stops to break up the journey. We stopped at the ubiquitous Old Faithful geyser for lunch, and at a couple other places in Yellowstone in order to take in the scenery and visit several sulfur pools. Yellowstone was, unsurprisingly, absolutely gorgeous, and nothing like the other national parks we had visited. Personally, I was a little disappointed by Old Faithful. It did faithfully go off at the appointed time, but it was a much quieter and shorter eruption than I had anticipated. It was impressive, but I had set my expectations far higher than the actual result. The rest of Yellowstone, however, was as spectacular as I had imagined. As we drove, we observed whole herds of wild bison on the sides of the road. It almost got to the point where the bison were almost commonplace and boring - although most of us never quite got over the fact that there were wild bison 15 feet from the bus. The drive was gorgeous, so much so that movies and blat waited several hours, in order to not distract from the continuous view. We have really had a treat, going through so many national parks, and so far they have yet to disappoint.

The rest of the drive was fairly uneventful. We had a full blat, despite only being in Jackson for two nights, mainly thanks to the presence of the Mangy Moose bar 100 feet from our hostel. We watched the new Casino Royale, and made a stop at a famous bakery in Montana, whose name I cannot recall. It was very good though, particularly the bear claws and brownies. The real fun, however, started when we arrived in Great Falls. Chase Mohney's (our local Great Falls gleek and Vice President) family lives in a small townhouse-like community, and most of us were staying with residents in the community. They had prepared a reception for us in the community clubhouse, with lots of beer, soda, and 25 pizzas from a pizza place in Montana which Chase used to work for. We didn't manage to finish the beer or soda, but the 25 pizzas were consumed in literally about fifteen minutes. Apparently long bus rides make for an even hungrier Glee Club. Who knew?

After the reception, everyone went home with their hosts, which wasn't far for most of us. I stayed in the community with a nice old lady, who very clearly misses mothering people. She is incredibly nice and helpful about everything, and had made Robby Griffin (my fellow hostee) and I cinnamon rolls for our stay. She asked to do our laundry, make us meals, and generally just talk to us. She is a little quirky, as is her house. There was a bear-skin on the floor in the corner next to Robby's bed, and Indian dream-catchers all over the walls of the bedroom. Her cat seemed to be named Miss Pissy - although perhaps that's just a pet name (pun intended). Nonetheless, she is quite interesting to talk to, and was an incredibly nice and good hostess to us, so we have no complaints whatsoever.

Quite a number of people met at Chase's house in the community after taking their bags and meeting their hosts. The over 21 contingent went out to two 'infamous' local bars, which had attractions such as live mermaids and a mechanical bull. By most accounts, the expedition seems to have been a very good time. Meanwhile, the under 21 group stayed at Chase's house, where there was internet, music, and generally a good time. We had a lot of fun looking around Chase's house, which had some amazing portraits of Chase up on the walls. Eventually, as the hour grew late, our fun denigrated into playing with a puppet koala, listening to music, and watching YouTube videos, at which point the bar expedition returned, and we exchanged stories and went to bed. I don't feel like I have really gotten a good taste of Montana as a whole, but so far it has been a relaxing and fun place. Hopefully that continues. And finally, at long last, we have a concert. It will be really nice to sing again.

Memorable quotes, events, and people:

"Sometimes I wake up and want to be a Jedi Knight. But there's just nothing I can do about it." - Kurt Nehrcorn

"You can't call a girl a 'snack'? Why not?" - the Great Dane Thomas Jensen trying to understand English colloquilisms
"Try it and see." - our bus driver

"It was kind of sketch. The average age of a person in the bar was about... 54." - Jeff Howard on the bar expedition

Great Falls Montana was always meant to be a relaxing stop. Our one full day there confirmed this - as our first activity wasn't until 2 PM! Ah, blessed, blessed sleep. Rehearsal did start promptly at 2 PM, however. It was Jim's first rehearsal with us since the 150th concert in April, and it showed. Jim wanted to reestablish his musical connection with the Glee Club. Meanwhile, we hadn't sung at all since Tuesday, and the whole rehearsal was filmed by a couple cameramen working for a Montana TV station. Despite these confounding factors, rehearsal went relatively smoothly. Thankfully, Jim didn't notice the cameras until about ten minutes before they left. Those ten minutes were hilarious - Jim became even more of a ham than usual in front of the camera. During rehearsal, Jim chose to focus on the first movement of the Argento. He drilled series of chords after series of chords, working to fix rough patches that he remembered from the 150th. The 150th was the last time we had ever done the first movement of the Argento, so we were a bit rough. That's what the rehearsal and concert are for. By the end of the day the Argento was still not back at 150th concert level, but it was a lot less rough than it had been. At this rate, we'll be ready to perform the whole Argento again by San Francisco, or maybe even Portland.

After our two hour rehearsal, we went back to our hosts houses for dinner. My host had thoroughly prepared for college guys, and had a wide variety of 'college' items available. We settled on a dinner of chicken strips and chips - not my usual preconcert fare, but quite tasty nonetheless. After dinner we changed and drove back for our call. The concert itself was quite fun. The acoustic was very dry, as we were performing in a theater-type hall, rather than a church or concert hall, which generally have a certain level of resonance. It was kind of sad to sing a really climactic chord, such as the one at the end of Slava, and not get any feedback. But, on the other hand, the dry acoustic meant that our sound was really clear and present.

Jim ordered our concert in what I suspect was a 'trial-run' of the upcoming LA and Ravinia concerts, the real gem venues of this tour. Here is the order we performed:
First half - Caritas Abundat into Kyrie into Agnus Dei, The Ballad of Little Musgrave and Lady Barnard,
Shenkhar into Sicut Cervus, Argento I
Second half - Arirang, Lo how a rose e're blooming, Glorious Apollo, Ne sedi Djemo, Blue Moon (Lite),
The Bear Necessities (Lite), Gentle Annie, Sacramento, Jerboa, New Britain, Football Songs, Lowlands (encore)
The first half in particular was pretty heavy-hitting, with both movements of the Josquin Mass, Sicut Cervus (probably our best renaissance piece), and Musgrave, an amazing modern piece which shows off some of the Glee Club's finest technical and interpretive skill. The only piece which I expect will join this first half in Disney Hall is the addition of the other two movements of the Argento. We'll see how accurate this prediction turns out to be.

The Great Falls audience loved us. We had a quite sizable turnout of a little over 500 people, and received a standing ovation forcing our encore. The encore itself was a bit of an adventure, because Joe Tofte - the soloist for All Through the Night - wasn't in very good voice after the football songs, so we sang Lowlands instead. In the preconcert frenzy at call, Jim had made us remove the music we weren't programming from our folders, so the Gleeks who listened to him were without Lowlands for the encore. Thankfully we have Lowlands, like most of our repertoire, practically memorized, so it went off with only one hitch, when the basses didn't come in on a two measure phrase, because most of us didn't remember quite how the entrance went. Oh well - no harm, no foul. And from now on, I think most of us will simply keep all our music in our folders. The concert itself was a really uplifting experience, and the changing room afterwards felt like a locker room after a victorious playoff game. We had come to Great Falls to sing, and we had conquered. A cute last moment of the concert was when Jim gave Chase - our great graduating Montanan - a huge hug onstage at the end of the concert. It was very fitting, and much appreciated by both Chase and the audience.

After the concert, we all went home with our hosts. Most of the Glee Club regathered at Chase's house to watch the end of the Celtics-Lakers championship game. After the game though, we all soon went home to get some sleep and rest before our 9 AM bus call. Montana is a big state, and we had quite a ways to go in order to move on.

Memorable quotes, events, and people:

"I love assigned seats!" - Josh Baiel

"I lost my hairtie." - Will Skinner
This loss then inspired him to put his hair down (taking out a new hairtie) during his 'soprano' solo in Sacramento.

The bus drive between Great Falls and Sandpoint was another long bus ride. The scenery was impressive, but we were all tired after our concert the night before, and even the views skirting the edge of Glacier National Park didn't serve to completely occupy our attention. For some unknown reason, there was no collection of Blat, which there most certainly should have been after Great Falls, especially considering that many Gleeks had gone out together to a bar or two during the stay. We watched Knocked Up, which was a surprisingly funny movie. I was sitting next to Jim for the bus ride, and the comments and stories that the movie elicited from him were priceless. Unprintable, but priceless. Still, the long bus ride passed. Even if a bus ride is boring, time still thankfully ticks on by.

Personally, I had a good time between talking to Jim, watching the scenery, and playing bridge. In fact, the Glee Club Bridge Club reached a couple momentous milestones. First of all, two new Gleeks joined us in playing bridge, Umang Shukla and Bernie Kreger. Bernie, of course, was not new to the game, but had not played with us before. This gave us enough people to set up two games at once, a first in Glee Club Bridge Club history. I played with Bernie on the front of the bus, while another table operated in the back. Bridge is spreading, and I can only imagine that our Sunday meetings next year will be quite well attended. Playing with Bernie was fun - unlike most people I play with, he wasn't taught by myself, and he uses different conventions than the rest of us. Quite an interesting experience. He did quite well too, I suppose practice really does create improvement.

We crossed timezones when we reached Idaho, which helped disguise the true length of our bus ride - a whopping ten hours, although this includes a stop at one of Glacier Park's lodges and another long stop for lunch. We arrived in Sandpoint tired and ready for dinner and bed. Our hosts were arranged through the Pend Lake Arts Council, which was very organized, and we were split up into hosting groups in record time. I was staying with Steven Leung with a very nice couple on the Arts Council. Before we went home, we went to some cabins by the lake, where several hosting groups got together to through a barbeque dinner. The dinner and cabins were absolutely amazing. The Lake was really clear and gorgeous, the food was delicious, and the cabins were authentic yet comfortable. Sandpoint is an incredible place - not at all like I imagined Idaho would be. Apparently the dreary potato farms in flat land that I imagined is only southern Idaho. The north end turned out to be stunningly beautiful, with Lake Pend Orielle surrounded by mountains. I have heard a sizeable number of Gleeks saying that they would love to live here or retire here. We have only been here for a couple hours, but the scenery and friendliness of the town have really taken most of us in.

The barbeque ended, and we lit a campfire to stay warm as it got dark. Sam Lederer pulled out a guitar and started playing, sparking a sing-a-long. Adam Clark combined with Sam to perform a version of Simon and Garfunkle's Sound of Silence which sounded strikingly like the original. Well, the parts Adam remembered did, anyways. Other highlights include Kurt Nehrcorn singing Why Georgia with guitar, and Chase Mohney attempting I Will Survive (Aretha Franklin). It was a really good time. We thanked our hosts for the barbeque by singing New Britain, and then went home. Steven and I were staying on the other side of the lake, and our hosts decided that rather than drive us home, they were going to take us over the lake. It was a real treat. The lake was totally empty and still, and our motorboat drew a perfect wake. Our host took us around a bit and pointed out some sights, and we watched and enjoyed the lake at night. It was really quite incredible. For a place I had never heard of, Sandpoint is turning out to be an amazing stop on our tour.

Memorable quotes, events, and people:

"Another national park we can notch on the bedpost." - Kelby Russell announcing our brief visit to Glacier National Park

"No. Wrong." - an unsympathetic Samuel Lederer to Adam Clark's attempt to sing The Sound of Silence

The morning started in an interesting manner. My host took Steven and I to a local coffee shop on the way to rehearsal, which had delicious coffee and pastries. Personally, I tried chai tea, and was very pleasantly surprised. We also convinced the owner to come to our concert in the evening. After our refreshment, we went to the theater itself. Panida Theater serves as the communities all purpose theater - it shows movies, plays, and apparently the Harvard Glee Club. We were, however, on its billboard outside, which was pretty cool. The space itself presented a bit of a problem. The auditorium was fairly large, holding about 500 people (~7% of Sandpoint's population), but the stage was tiny. Our contact in Sandpoint decided to attend the rehearsal and watch us - and from there the problems began.

Jim, being Jim, wanted to find the best possible acoustic arrangement for our standing positions. Jim is terrified of a 'dense' sound, which unsurprisingly occurs when we are standing close together. Sandpoint's small stage meant that we were not only close, we were very, very close - and close to Jim as well, which meant that he heard a lot more individual voices (such as my own) and less of a blended sound. The combination of these factors made Jim frantic to find another solution. So Jim pulled out a formation that he claims is an old favorite - encircling the audience. The idea is that the Glee Club is literally in a huge ring around the middle section of the audience - with Jim conducting from the middle. This formation spreads us out a lot, and also puts Jim at the center of a huge circle - a perfectly blended sound. The formation, while perfect from Jim's perspective, is decidly NOT ok from the audience's perspective, despite Jim's claims to the contrary. This became a particular issue as our Sandpoint contact started to object to our arrangement loudly and vocally. I believe there was at least one comment to the effect of "your butts are cute but the audience doesn't want to pay to come see them" (referring to the members of the audience not in the encircled middle section). Her objections and comments brought out Jim's stubborn streak, and he resisted any outside influences on the 'artistry of our sound', which is affected by the arrangement. Eventually we (the Glee Club, not the contact) convinced Jim to at least try the stage arrangement again. Once up there, we all claimed that we could hear and blend better (not entirely untrue) and our assistant conductor, Michael McGaghie, out in the audience claimed that we sounded great and not too dense (almost certainly untrue). Jim was convinced, and the rehearsal and concert were completed onstage.

Rehearsal had been scheduled early to give us time to explore and enjoy the little town of Sandpoint. Personally, I went to a lovely lunch with many fellow Gleeks at the Cafe Trinity, which featured American food, sushi, and some delicious drinks, including boysenberry lemonade and ice tea. After lunch we all went to the beach and relaxed there for a long time. The more athletically inclined purchased a volleyball and started a game, while the less athletic either read, napped, or watched the game and the neighboring games with local students. It was a lot of fun and very relaxing. A small group of Gleeks was treated to a motorboat outing on the lake, but I was not among them. I'm sure, however, that the boating was equally pleasant as the rest of our activities.

At 5, we met at the community center for a potluck dinner with our hosts before heading over to the theater for soundcheck and rehearsal. The sixth (and final) game of the NBA championship series also started, and those Gleeks with internet enabled phones kept us updated on the score throughout dinner and soundcheck. After the soundcheck, we changed and convened in the parking lot outside the theater for our pre-concert peptalk. It was probably one of the first peptalks ever that had to continually be paused to let cars through our formation. The concert itself was great. The acoustic, while dense, was also very dry and clear, which really helped us to hear and tune while packed so close together. Also, the informal nature of the hall let Lite perform some of it's less classical repertoire, which was a lot of fun:

First half - Shenkhar into Sicut Cervus, Caritas Abundat into Kyrie into Slava, The Ballad of Little Musgrave and Lady Barnard,
Argento III
Second half - Cantantes Licet Usque Eamus, Lo how a rose e're blooming, Glorious Apollo, Ne sedi Djemo, Hooked on a Feelin' (Lite),
In the Still of Night (Lite), Arirang, Gentle Annie, Jerboa, Skye Boat Song, Football Songs, All Through the Night (encore)
The concert went really well and was quite well received by our audience. Jim was lovable, and even announced the Celtics-Lakers score midway through the second half. My personal favorite/least favorite moment was In the Still of the Night, which went very well, until Sam Crihfield, the baritone soloist, decided to take the entire last line up an octave - which was a hilariously poor choice. Despite this, the concert was a resounding success, and a big step forward musically for us - it was the first concert of tour where the soft sections were truly pianissimo. This made certain pieces, particularly the Britten, much more powerful than they had been previously. To top off the concert, there was even an alum to sing the football songs with us, although there were no chants of Radcliffe from the audience.

After the concert, everyone went home with their hosts, exhausted from the combination of performance and a day in the sun. My host decided that this was the perfect juncture to show off his car collection to us. Steven and I were treated to a tour of four different Corvettes and their stories, along with a '66 GTO. He then took us for a little joyride in the GTO, to let us get a feel for the old musclecar of his youth. The unexpected twist was that WE had to drive back. I was nominated, and sort of squeaked my way back. Never having driven a stick-shift before, I did a truly terrible job and never really topped 10 mph. Regardless, it was quite an experience. Sandpoint was a remarkable and memorable stop along our tour.

Memorable quotes, events, and people:

"He must have showered!"

"Encircle the audience!"

"Kurt, you have to stand in front of the mouth of Dave and it'll be fine." - Jim, trying to eliminate voicepart lineups on a small stage

"The reason you didn't do it is because you had no warning." - Jim's remonstrance to the Glee Club for failing to follow his gestures

"You guys could sing the phone book and it would sound good!" - audience member during the concert
"Well, we know the yellow pages." - a flustered Jim

The trip from Sandpoint was long. Eastern Washington is very scenic, but we just plowed through along I-90, which was a good choice time-wise, but detracted more than a bit from the scenery we saw. Everyone was pretty tired, and about 1/3 of the bus managed to sleep through the movie, Monty Python and the Holy Grail. This even included Jim, who is notoriously bothered by movie noises. Speaking of Jim, Wednesday was his 25th wedding anniversary! Jim doesn't have a cell phone, so he wasn't able to talk with Polly on the bus ride, but he hoped to call her once we arrived in Seattle.

The rest of the bus ride was pretty unremarkable. We stopped at a beautiful rest area in eastern Washington for a picnic lunch, but got back on the road relatively quickly. As we got closer to Seattle though, everyone got more excited. Seattle was a beautiful city, which many of us had not seen, and there was a surprise for Jim waiting there. As it turns out, our tour planners had heard about this anniversary many months ago, and had secretly arranged to fly Polly out to Seattle to meet Jim. When we arrived, Polly was waiting, hiding in one of many hosts cars outside the bus. Kelby told Jim that his host was there and needed to go quickly, so Jim was let off the bus first, and taken behind it to get his luggage off the bottom. The Glee Club started to pour off the bus, as we were going to sing Shenkhar, the Georgian wedding song, as a celebration of the anniversary. Jim preempted our plans, and somehow found Polly where she was hiding before we all got off the bus. While they were hugging, we finished assembling and began to sing - directed by Kevin. After the song, Chase presented Jim and Polly with a bottle of champagne. Jim and Polly absolutely loved everything. Hooray Glee Club!

After reuniting Jim and Polly for their anniversary, we split up and went home with our hosts. I was very lucky in Seattle, as a former Microsoft employee and Glee Club alum, Ben Waldman '89, had requested to have a CS major for his hostee. As the only CS major travelling, I got an absolutely spectacular hosting arrangement. Ben wanted to show me Seattle, so we first went to his friend Marian's house, which had a beautiful view of downtown and Lake Union. After having tea with Marian, we went to his house and dropped off my things before going to a really nice dinner on the lakefront at Joey's. I ate with Ben, Marian, his roommate and his roommate's boyfriend. It was a great meal, with fun service, very good food, and hilarious company. I learned a lot about both Seattle and Microsoft, two topics which are very pertinent to my possible future. After dinner, which ballooned out into a three hour long affair, I went home to sleep and rest up for my first full day in Seattle.

Memorable quotes, events, and people:

Watching Jim and Polly meet each other so happily on their anniversary.

Kicking off our stay in Seattle was an entirely free day. Our tour manager, Kelby Russell, listed two extensive itineraries in our tourbook, with two suggested days that Gleeks could do together. The first planned day involved catching the ferry to Bainbridge Island (across Puget Sound) and spending the day there enjoying local shops, scenery, and several beautiful bike trails. The second planned day was based around downtown Seattle, and was essentially a long list of fun activities and sites to see in the area, from Pike Place Market to the underground tours to the Japanese superstore. The idea was to have Gleeks out and about exploring either Seattle proper or Bainbridge together, rather than being stuck somewhere on their own.

After little debate, I opted for the day in Bainbridge, figuring that a bikeride would be fun, and that I could always see Seattle the next day. The Glee Club split roughly in half, which left thirty people accompanying me to Bainbridge. The ferry ride was nice, a very smooth sail which offered an amazing view of the Seattle skyline retreating into the distance. We ran into trouble once on the island, however, as the singular bike rental there was staffed by only one individual, and had only about twenty bikes to rent. So, about twenty of us, including me, got bikes, while the rest of the Bainbridge group explored the town, and once sated, headed back to Seattle for the rest of the day. Thankfully, the ferry dropped off right next to downtown, meaning that anyone who returned from Bainbridge early could easily pick up the other option for the day.

The bike ride in Bainbridge was intense. There was a 28 mile loop around the island, which almost everyone embarked on initially. While many Gleeks may have been able to bike 28 miles on flat ground, and certainly many thought they could do so, the bike trail ended up being a huge series of steep hills. Personally, I turned off after about two miles, and ended up biking on my own on unmarked paths through a forest park. It was absolutely gorgeous, and eventually I looped back and completed about a six mile ride - which was enough to thoroughly exhaust my legs. The highlights of the scenery turned out to be the small churches tucked here and there throughout Bainbridge. I went inside one particularly pretty church, and discovered that the inside was lit purely by natural light - the church used designed clear windows rather than stained-glass, and therefore had an gorgeous naturally-lit interior. Another highlight was the church where RCS sang last year. Meanwhile, most of my compatriots were still struggling around the 28 mile loop. As far as I have heard, only two people made it the entire way - with everyone else breaking off after either their legs or their pride gave in. The really unfortunate group of Gleeks were the group that got all the way to the north end of the island before realizing they couldn't continue, because they literally had to turn around and bike/walk back everywhere they'd been. It should be amusing watching people stand during our next rehearsal.

At about 2 PM I turned in my bike and joined a group of sated bikers to head back to Seattle. I ended up eating fish with Tim Reckart, our financial manager. After a delicious meal, we went and saw a couple downtown highlights, which included Pike Place Market and the amazing public library building. At 6 I met up with my host, who took me to walk through the city center, which included the space needle, the opera house, and the rock and roll museum - which is evidently one of Frank Gehry's very few unappealing architectural creations. After seeing more of the city, we went home and I spent the rest of the evening talking to my host. As a Glee Club alum who majored in computer science, went on to work for Microsoft, and lives in Seattle, I had a lot I wanted to learn from him and get his perspective on. He, in turn, wanted to learn about the new Glee Club, and particularly how we were going about choosing a new conductor and replacement for Jim. It was a fascinating evening. I owe Kelby a huge thank you for arranging this particular hosting for me.

Memorable quotes, events, and people:

"Check out chinatown. Hang with my peeps." - Yuting Chiang's plan for the free day in Seattle

"I [Phil] have a small shack built on the moral high ground." - Chris Van Buren's description of fellow Gleek Phil Hafferty

I took the morning off, skipping the optional activities in favor of sleeping in and getting my first 10+ hour sleep of tour. Just to post a little of what was available, however, our tourbook suggested the following activities: Henry Art Gallery, Recycled Cycles, Burke Gilman Trail, and the University Book Store. Everyone I talked to who took the morning to experience another part of Seattle enjoyed it. That said, my sleep was definitely a good choice.

Even I had to wake up eventually, as we had a rehearsal for our concert that evening. We all came to rehearsal impressed by the theater. We sang at Meany Hall, one of the concert halls at the University of Washington - which has an absolutely beautiful campus. The concert hall was very professional. We were given the Green Room to dump our stuff, and had two theater technicians helping us - reposition the piano, moving Jim's platform, and even folding up and taking away the unwanted risers. In short, they annoyed Jim to the umpteenth degree. Particularly irritating were the fire curtain rules - no physical objects were allowed in a foot wide zone across the stage, where a metal curtain would fall in the case of a fire. This meant that both Jim's podium and his stand had to be outside of this strip, which made him either stand way out in front of us, or deeply into our midst. Jim kept trying to edge into the strip and cheat. Eventually, the technicians simply put down some white tape on the ground to mark the strip exactly, allowing Jim to edge as close as possible. He eventually chose to stand farther away. This made him feel a little more disconnected, but it was preferable to having him inside the arc, forcing Gleeks to turn away from the audience to see him.

The rehearsal itself went pretty well. Most of it was spent on working the Argento and Agnus Dei back up into shape, with a lot of time spent tuning individual chords and adjusting openings and entrances. Still, the space was quite nice, and everyone was rested after our day off in Seattle, so what would have been a very taxing rehearsal was actually quite bearable and successful.

After rehearsal, we all went over to the Green Room, and indulged on pizza provided by the Harvard Club. We changed as we ate, and were more than slightly surprised when fifteen minutes before call, a loud, deep voice came over speakers everywhere backstage announcing fifteen minutes. The Glee Club certainly felt professional after that. They continued to announce backstage commands throughout the concert - it never got old.

The concert itself was an interesting experience. Some pieces were absolutely phenomenal. In fact, the entire opening was just absolutely fantastic. Sicut took off, and Josquin was absolutely gorgeous - full of intertwining lines rather than just chords. The Ballad of Little Musgrave continued to have the highs and lows that we had achieved before, and we really just carried momentum into the Argento. We were performing the first and third movements, and had really drilled them hard during rehearsal. We were ready, but Jim was not. Jim had not one, but several miscues during the first movement, which resulted in some bizarre entrances and reptitions that did not exist. We started the third movement a little bit stunned by what had happened in the first movement. And with that lack of focus, we were even more disconcerted by slight changes that Jim made. It was almost as if Jim was trying out new ideas that he had during the concert. Normally this would be fine, but with all of us on our heels, his dragging certain areas and brutally rushing others did not work, and the movement faltered along. I'm almost certain that the audience did not notice - we didn't had a complete trainwreck and the Argento is an inaccessible piece anyways. Nevertheless, it was a major letdown on the Glee Club level, and Jim did not assuage our feelings by deflecting blame at the intermission meeting. Personally, I was quite upset and angry - but perhaps I get a little more into the music than most.

The second half of the concert rolled along relatively smoothly. Nothing really sparkled, but on the other hand nothing faltered, which was an improvement. The Football Songs were also quite fun - this was the first concert where we had a significant number of alums. As a result, we quickly changed plans and did all the football songs that we knew, which was a lot of fun. There were no chants of 'Radcliffe!' though. Maybe next time. After the concert there was a small reception with desserts thrown by the Harvard Club. We ate, sang Fair Harvard and then went home to sleep. Not a perfect concert, but it had it's moments.

Memorable quotes, events, and people:

"Trade spots with longjohn." - Jim, confusing Andrew Brownjohn's name

"I work in a theater. I have cred." - Kevin Davies on the positioning of Jim's music stand relative to the fire curtain

"I have never been so surprised in my life! Who IS that beautiful woman getting out of the car? It's Polly!"
- Jim, on finding Polly on his 25th anniversary

"Maybe if you shaved, you'd have more breath." - Michael McGaghie to Miles Canaday

The drive down to Portland from Seattle was only three hours long. And it was a good thing, because we performed that night! We bused directly to Kaul Auditorium at Reed College, breaking only for lunch at a random outlet area. We had an immediate afternoon rehearsal. Kaul Auditorium was an interesting space. It did not look impressive at all. It felt almost more like a gymnasium than a concert hall, and many people said that its linoleum floor reminded them of a cafeteria. The acoustic, however, was really, really good to us. It was very clear, and fairly dry. There was just a hint of resonance, and we could hear each other well from each and every position we tried. I was quite amused to hear the people around me responding 'yes' to Jim's question 'hearing better?' at every rearrangement, even when we shifted back into old positions. Pretty funny.

After rehearsal, we bused down into Portland's Pearl District for dinner. The Pearl District was a fun place. It featured, along with several good dinner spots, the main outlet of Powell's Book Store, the largest independently-owned bookstore in the United States. Personally, I found a lovely, new age cafe which served some quite good pizza. After our break, we headed back to Kaul Auditorium for our second performance in two days. We had a little bit of an unpleasant surprise on arrival, learning that the changing room only fit about ten people. Oops. We ended up hanging shirts over the windows and changing in the hallway. Hopefully there were no peeping toms. We were also treated the surreal experience of seeing Sam Lederer shave. He chose to shave his full beard into a very suspect facial hair arrangement. I will let the picture speak for itself. Anyways, we got a kick out of it.

The concert itself was really solid. The acoustic was really kind to us, and our performance rolled along amazingly smoothly with it. Seattle had been the first place where we did not have a standing ovation (and hopefully the only place), Portland was certainly not a repeat of that. We did the first and second movements of the Argento, and while we were apprehensive going in, they came off just fine. The second movement in particular was strong, as we managed to end all of the a cappella sections in near-perfect key (very rare for such long interludes)! Concert highlights included the Ballad of Little Musgrave (surprise!, that piece works really well for us) and Skye Boat song, oddly enough. At least personally, that song took off for the first time, well, ever. It was a lot of fun. Another point of amusement - Harker Rhodes did the introduction for Skye Boat, claiming to be a descendant of the Scottish clan McClure who learned the history behind the song on his mother's knee. Meanwhile, Matt McClure, who is actually of the clan McCloud, could only stand in the arc and smile...

First half - Caritas Abundat into Sicut Cervus, Kyrie into Slava The Ballad of Little Musgrave and Lady Barnard, Argento I & II
Second half - Lowlands, Arirang, Ne Sedi Djemo, Glorious Apollo, Blue Moon (Lite), Wouldn't It Be Nice (Lite),
Lo how a rose e're blooming, Skye Boat Song, Sacramento, New Britain, Football Songs, All Through the Night (encore)

After the concert, we met our hosts and went straight home. Most of the Glee Club had signed up to make a three mile hike starting at 6 AM the next morning, so needed to go to bed within an hour to get any sleep at all. I, being slightly more sensible, had chosen to forego the hike in favor of sleep. I, however, was distracted by the presence in the audience of my girlfriend's parents. I had met them once before, but having them attend my concert and see me without my girlfriend being there was a little nervewracking, to say the least. I survived.

Memorable quotes, events, and people:

"I really need to shave." - Dave Rhein
"I really don't." - Will Skinner

"Hi Yu... Ting... Bong." - Jim still having stuggles with names (Yuting Chiang)

"If this were Robert Shaw, you would not do that." - Jim, pointing to himself

"Please made sure the vents of your coats are open. I went around checking the other day, but I don't know if I got everyone."
- Marco Chan, wardrobe manager