It seems like such a simple question, one that we should have had an answer for. We were coming off a first concert success that far exceeded our plans and expectations.

Now what?!

Our first performance on October 20th, 1991, was a day of revelry and celebration that represented eighteen months of slow and diligent work. The morning of October 21st felt more like a hangover. The founding group had casual discussions about how many performances we would do each year and if a season would be built around the calendar or academic year. There was talk about a spring event but nothing more specific than that. It was clear to us that we had started something very special and that a follow up event should happen sooner rather than later. We certainly didn’t want to wait until the following spring to perform again. What we didn’t have much of was funding or organizational structure. That would take another year to put in place, so we had to improvise our next steps.

Through my position as Director of Music Ministries at White Plains United Methodist in Cary, we found a partner that made it possible for us to plan a Christmas concert on December 22nd, 1991. This provided us with a performance venue that was logistically flexible enough to host a large choir as well as provide some financial support. The church was in the initial phases of starting a concert series and our plans merged with theirs seamlessly. We planned a service built around John Rutter’s Gloria and well-known Christmas Carols arranged by English choral great David Willcocks, featuring a brass octet, timpani, and percussion from the North Carolina Symphony.

While the Christmas concert plans fell into place nicely, we had other challenges that most people are not aware of. We needed sheet music for seventy-five singers, a very large expense if we had to purchase it. We were able to borrow most of the needed copies from churches, but only the largest churches would have that many copies. Carol arrangements from their libraries are often used by them yearly. I called about six churches and cobbled together what we needed. There was also a short turn around for publicity, rehearsals, and expenses that we had to raise in less than two months. Remember that in 1991, most communication was still ink to paper. My desktop computer had a monochrome monitor and a 20MB hard drive (that is not a typo). Email was not in widespread use, even in high tech Cary. We needed funding to hire the instrumentalists. As they did in the premiere concert, the American Federation of Musicians underwrote 50% of that cost though their grassroots fund designed to promote the work of their members in areas with emerging performance communities. The rest was donated by members of the choir, community members, and people from the congregation at White Plains United Methodist.

The concert was a huge success! If there were any empty seats, I didn’t see them. The choir sang beautifully, and the NC Symphony players were their usual top of the line performers. We received a share of the revenue that helped us move forward. In some ways, pulling off the second concert so quickly was a bigger accomplishment than the first.

Preparing and organizing concert number two was a whirlwind. There were many people involved that helped make it happen, but I remember how fortunate we were to have Fuller Blunt as one of our cofounders. Fuller served for 35 years as a high school vocal music teacher and music supervisor in the Long Island, NY school system. As many of you know and perhaps experienced, high school vocal music teachers are highly skilled, highly organized, and well versed in herding cats. They work in the trenches. Fuller organized parents committees to run fund raising, choir tours, concert dress etc. He often told me numerous times that he ran a “benign dictatorship.” There were many times during our first decade that Fuller Blunt was a major player in all aspects of the organization, and a good friend to me. This is why the Concert Singers of Cary annual scholarship bears his name.

Click here Click here to see a PDF of the program for that 2nd concert!

Next up: ‘Chapter 3 – Carmina Burana… did you say tuna and slaw?’