I had never flown before.
I sat at the diner in the Tri-Cities Regional Airport weakly poking my breakfast with my fork. Caleb Walker sat beside me, looking as pale as I. He had never flown before, either.
It’s funny, in retrospect, to see ourselves so shaken by the concept of riding a flying bus. Merely hours away was the opportunity of a lifetime for the ETSU Men’s Ensemble, but the most prevalent thing on our minds was whether or not the puddle-jumper we were taking to Charlotte was safe.
Oh well. I guess it’s human-nature to worry oneself with one’s most urgent concerns.
As Caleb and I sat around making morbid humor about our situation, David Thompson came over and tried to calm us down with a few helpful insights. “Don’t worry,” he said. “Unless we’re riding one of those tiny planes, everything is going to be fine.”
I’m not an expert on planes or anything, but if I had to guess, I would say the plane we rode on was indeed tiny. It was so tiny, in fact, that I was compelled to quietly sing “It is Well” to myself for most of our 25 minute journey.
I survived, however, as evidenced by my authorship of this very article.
And although it may sound like it, this is not an in-depth expose on the condition of Tri-Cities airlines. This story is about something else altogether.
On Friday, March 12, the ETSU Men’s Ensemble earned the opportunity to perform at the Intercollegiate Men’s Choruses 2004 National Seminar at Harvard University in Cambridge, just outside of Boston. It was not a competition, but instead a celebration of men’s choral music.
The best part is that we “celebrated” men’s choral music with some of the best men’s glee clubs and ensembles in the nation: Kansas State, Rutgers, Michigan, Morehouse College and Cornell, just to name a few.
And although we had no idea at the time, we would be thrust into the spotlight as the grand finale of one incredible night of music.
The road to Harvard was long, and the preparation was grueling. Under the direction of Dr. Tom Jenrette, choral director at ETSU for 25 years, our eight-song selection ranged from Renaissance to Bluegrass, composed in six different languages.
We began our conditioning last year, and the training intensified at the outset of this semester. No one in the ensemble was unaffected by the difficulty of our repertoire, and I’m sure no one failed to lose sleep worrying about our ability to rise to the level of performance that would be expected at Harvard.
Yet even though practices were tough and Doc had to wring our best musicality from us like a man trying to get water from a drying sponge in the desert, no one quit, and no one buckled.
Fortitude became our avatar and “never die” our motto, and we marched ever forward to our date with Harvard, whether it be a day of adulation or our own somber funerals.
Yeah, it was pretty intense.
Anyway, when we finally arrived at the Logan Inter-national Airport, we were exhausted. We checked into the Harvard Square Hotel and went our separate ways, some of us electing to get a bite to eat, others deciding to take a nap before the concert we were required to attend later that evening.
For me, at least, the immense pressure of what we were about to do had not yet taken hold. To be fair, though, I had never done anything like this before.
After the concert on Thursday night, I quickly realized that we would not be performing before an audience of the general public.
For the most part, we would be performing in front of an audience of our peers, men who had put just as much effort as we had into making our performances excellent. I reasoned that they would not be easily impressed, and failure to prove our merit would most likely result in anger and resentment.
It was getting more intense.
Friday came after a restless night of turbulent dreams. After an amazing performance by Morehouse College at a concert earlier in the evening, we all went back to our rooms to don our tuxedos and prepare ourselves for the concert at 8:30. Four groups would be performing: the McCallie Men’s Ensemble, the Miami University Glee Club, the Rutgers University Glee Club and, finally, us.
What happened that night, in my opinion, is almost to incredible to describe. The first performance by McCallie surprised me, especially considering that they were only high school-aged kids. They could really sing.
Then Miami took the stage, and I mean they literally took the stage. With over one hundred men, they rocked the house. Their performance of “Demon in my View” is especially memorable, since it is a setting of my favorite poem “Alone” by Edgar Allen Poe.
They ended with a Native American piece called “Ramkali,” by far one of the most impressive performances at any of the four concerts.
When Rutgers went on, the crowd’s excitement was boiling to a fever pitch. Of course, Rutgers was awesome with over a hundred men themselves and fate was quickly weaving a scheme that would either be in our favor or become unmercifully cruel.
The crowd was ready for the finale. They wanted the best, and only we were left to give it to them.
However, if we did not rise to that level, if we did not perform to meet their expectations, then we would be remembered as the group that no one should have stayed to see, and we would remember the event sadly for the rest of our lives.
The intensity had reached a catastrophic level.
Under the lights of Sanders Theatre at Harvard University, the ETSU Men’s Ensemble bravely walked on stage. Thunderous rounds of applause and mad roars of excitement rang out from the crowd as we formed our performance arc.
Sweat decorated every brow as Doc scanned each of our faces, checking to see if we were ready and wondering if our will still held firm. “Hearts on fire; minds on ice,” he had told us before we had gone on stage, and through a great feat of mental fortitude, we managed to not only look the role of confident singers, but be them as well.
Finally, our accompanist Robert Jeter gave Curtis “B.J.” Dishner the first pitch and he began “Ave Maria.”
I’ll always remember that night. Standing on that stage with some of the coolest people I’ve ever met, directed by a man I’ve come to greatly respect, and performing before a group individuals who know the value of hard work and perseverance, I think I’ll smile at the memory.
College, I believe, is a collection of experiences and events that mold a person into who they will be for the rest of their life. This concert was a pivotal event in mine.
Although I think we could have done better, and although I know I could have done better, the crowd stood to their feet and cheered nonetheless.
They heard something in us that was, to risk sounding corny, magical. And the best part was, I felt that magic too. The magic of performing with your friends. The magic of pleasing an insatiable crowd. The magic of making beautiful music. These are not things you can learn – you’ve got to experience them.
Kudos to B.J. for doing so well with “Ave Maria,” to Russell Thompson for sounding very stern in “Clic Clac,” to Zach Marshall for an incredible performance in “Zog Maran,” and to Daniel Boner, Jess Helton, Kris Carlson, Robert Jeter, Ross Badder and Russell again for their performances in “Old Dan Tucker.”
Good job guys – we made it special – give yourselves a Harvard “snap-snap-snap.

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