For every one of the 76 trombones, there is a happy MoTab Tour 2015 memory:
1) When the night sky and the madly-blowing wind at the Woodstock concert made Alex Boye's "I Want Jesus to Walk with Me" solo especially intense and intensely good. It was like... The song already kinda sounds like a magnificently wailing storm, and when we had an ACTUAL wailing storm happening around us as we performed that one... It was like... Are ya kidding me right now!?!?!
2) The Woodstock crowd. That audience was stalwart. Despite the cold temps and the wild weather, the crowd was still huge. They came, bundled themselves up real nicely, and were just so gracious, fun, and appreciative. So impressive
3) Hailey: "Hey, that splotch on your dress looks just like a horse............WAIT! They're ALL horses!"
4) When my jaw dropped and I had no ability left to speak upon seeing the Marriott-Marquis-at-Times-
5) Working out in the 23rd-floor gym, treadmillin' it up as I gazed out the window at Times Square below at night
6) Spending an entire day at West Point, singing "Alma Mater" and "America the Beautiful" for a young Korean-American cadet living there, afterwards hearing him smilingly say This is the coolest thing I've ever seen here at West Point, and spending hours listening to him tell exciting tales about what life is like at West Point
7) Eating twice in West Point's Hogwarts-like mess hall! Holy COOL
8) Being able to actually WEAR PANTS for a MoTab thing! Yay Yankees games!
9) Being in the presence of one of my very best lifelong friends of all time -- my darling Debra -- not once, not twice, but THRICE! (Home-cooked Sunday dinner, Carnegie Hall concert #1, Yankee Stadium.) Her hubby was there too. It was sooooo awesome and refreshing to see them. I love them
10) Grimaldi's with the great Ernie Barry, who's a musician himself, and is good friends with [and plays accordion for] Jimmy Kimmel. He enthusiastically told us multiple times: "You're the greatest choir in the world!" We sang "God Bless America" and "America the Beautiful" for him, right there on the street, and it ended up being a pretty touching and happy few moments
11) On both airplane flights, when the front and back of each plane were so out-of-sync with each other during "God Be With You" that is was utterly laughable and I could not contain myself. I'm sorry, 'kay! :D
12) Jane Clayson Johnson, Jeh Johnson, the Saratoga Springs mayor, the New York lieutenant governor, a Rabbi, and our buddy Santino Fontana (among others) being our "guest conductors" for our encore numbers
13) Elder Larry Y. Wilson also was a guest conductor for our "This Land is Your Land" number. What a guy! He and his wife are awesome. I loved and was thankful for the privilege to hear them speak at our sacrament meeting in the hotel ballroom (week #1), and to also hear Elder Ronald A. Rasband and his sweet wife speak at the next week's sacrament meeting
14) Feeling camaraderie and mutual empathy with many, many MoTab friends towards the end of the trip due to us all catching the same silly, ridonkadonk head cold!
15) Stepping off the first airplane LIKE THIS on our first day in Maryland aka first day of the tour!
16) The hotel lobby chandeliers:
17) The "rowdy" crowd at the Carnegie #2 night, who always clapped in between songs when etiquette advised that they shouldn't clap. But I'm so glad they did! It made that concert so very enjoyable to me! That was my favorite concert of the entire tour -- hands down!
18) Ringin' my F# bells......and being able to be a bell-ringer with my roommate-in-real-life Maria
19) Showing my friends where Zac Efron's handsome doppelgänger once served me ice cream three years ago, in the nifty lil' ice cream shoppe under the Brooklyn Bridge
20) The Brooklyn Bridge's tribute to cheesecake:
21) Gallivanting with some of my boys as we explored where President George Washington used to live with his family. What a house! What land!
22) These Mount Vernon sheep. We think they were fighting with each other, but in a weird, quiet way...
23) This depiction of Washington. Oh my word:
24) Ground Zero. This memorial moved me to tears automatically. My heart was so touched, as I touched the people's inscribed names with my hands
25) The Manhattan New York temple with Bekah, McQueen, and Stace-Face. And we saw Clay Christiansen there, at the elevator. It was wonderful
26) The way Bekah had just barely made a Lego version of the Manhattan temple prior to visiting the temple in-person with us
27) Dorky group selfies every dayyyy
28) Running around the towns and periodically experiencing exciting fellow-MoTab-friends sightings!
29) So much beauty all around at the Cloisters! (Thank you, John Rockefeller! You're quite the feller!)
30) 500-year-old unicorn tapestries. Unicorns. Please, need I say more?
31) Playing ping-pong on stone ping-pong tables......with cellphones for paddles......with cellphones for GoPro cameras......
32) Yankee Stadium oh how I love thee. It's okay to love the Yankees on the one day you sing the national anthem in their stadium, and then dislike them all the other days of your life......
33) Budweiser-sponsored Yankees baseball caps for Mormon Tabernacle Choir organization members. I asked it once, and I'll ask it again: "Need I say more?" (Kerstin plucked out the stitched Budweiser logo from the back of her cap. Reason #4,227,962 why Kerstin is so cool.)
34) Driving "home" to the hotel from the Yankee stadium rehearsal......and spotting the Seinfeld restaurant
35) Dining at the Stardust diner, where the entire eatery is an American Idol stage and your waiters and waitresses are the talented contestants
36) The Hershey Kiss that is as big as my head
37) Saying hello to dear ol' Coney Isle because we chanced to be there... Dipping feet in the Atlantic Ocean with Lauren... Playing a challenging game of ultimate frisbee in the sand because wearing a maxi dress while trying to run, throw, and catch in the sand is just not easy. It just is not. Especially when you strained your left big toe while doing it! Dahaha. But it was awesome. So awesome
38) Riding three Coney Island rollercoasters in aforementioned maxi dress. The three coasters included......one where the safety restraint/seat belt was designed in such a fashion that it made for my springy flowy fluttery maxi dress to whip & flail ferociously through the air, causing me to helplessly flash the entire world that was below me on solid ground... Whooooopsie daiiisy... (Good thing we were probably rolling too fast for anyone to notice...)
39) ......and then there was the super-squishy jaunt on the historic Cyclone rollercoaster. That coaster is 88 years old! And so squishy. But comfy enough to endure the ride with joy. Ehhh but it literally shook the brain that is inside my head like a Magic 8 Ball. Maybe that's why I've been feeling pretty delirious for the past week...
40) Speaking of the number 88, Bekah, McQueen & I walked into a piano store to learn about the brand of piano that has not just 88 keys, but a few extra keys at the bottom of the keyboard that are all black, and are used for emphasis of bold final chords of certain musical selections. OHMIGORSH WHAT!?
41) Immediately following our second Carnegie Hall concert, I reunited with a long-lost college friend named Lindsay (hadn't seen her in FO-EVAH!), and chatted with her and this fun, kind man she works with: the Ambassador to The United Nations for the Polynesian Kingdom of Atooi. He told me stories of his friendships with some of my favorite musicians, such as Willie Nelson, Dolly Parton, and Johnny Cash. He told of how, when he was three years old, he used to nap on Eleanor Roosevelt's shoulder. His parents were close friends with Eleanor and her husband, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. I felt so humbled to have been able to cross paths with this man, and with an old college friend! (Okay, maybe "old" is not the proper descriptor, cuz we ain't that old yet! ;)
42) The West Point 4th-of-July concert. Okay, so, like, that concert was a spectacular experience. It served as an official event to officially welcome the newest cadets to the United States Military Academy. There were a couple specific moments during the concert that got me choked up pretty good: when the cadets and the thousands of audience members sang along to our "God Bless America," and when the cadets sang along to our Armed Forces medley. I thought that was so special. When I saw those young men and women in their uniforms, and in their dignified air, I immediately gained a whole new respect and an improved understanding of why it's so important for our country to have a military, and why it's so important to support them and to pray for them
43) Scott Barrick's Scott Barracks
44) For late-night snack purposes... The Cheerios and milk that Emily and I bought from a super tiny local deep-in-the-heart-of-Manhattan grocery store, which was made up of just one room that was probably only like 15 feet long and 15 feet wide
45) Teaching Pacific creole on the bus to my friend Rich. We love the translations for the words "children," "slay," "destruct"
46) The bricks growing inside this tree along the Freedom Trail in Boston
47) Good times at Paul Revere's house and surrounding cannoli locations
48) Bostonian architecture
49) Finding precisely where my friend Travis had left a secret message for me on the wall of the Old North Church one month prior...... But some punk took it down before I could get to it! Jerk! Oh well. It was still a really fun scavenger hunt, and Travis did fortunately take a picture of what he wrote to me, prior to his planting it in a crevice on the exterior of the brick building
50) Being assigned the emergency exit row on the airplane ride home! Can you say "THREE ACTUAL FEET OF LEG ROOM"!?!?!?!
51) Discovering that I may be crazy in love with scallops... THANK YOU BOSTONIAN SEAFOOD DINNERS!
52) Two words: Barry Anderson. He is my favorite person. (Okay that was seven words. Plus two punctuation marks.)
53) Charging up smiles at the Waldorf... Get ready for these smiles:
54) Nancy Beth slaying me with her hilarity at dinner tables, on late-night bus rides, and like such as
55) Cookie Monster reading the Bible. (#nancybeth)
56) Little girl in front of Carnegie Hall after concert #2. She was like 3 feet tall. She tapped me on the leg and asked me if she could have my autograph. Adorable :)
57) Hundreds of MoTab performers wearing matching tuxedos and red shimmery gowns, parading for miles to-and-fro from Times Square to Carnegie and back, causing the public to eye us curiously
58) In between the Strathmore matinee and evening concert...... The Ellen DeGeneres charades game app. Yes
59) Playing the Ellen DeGeneres charades game again on the bus the following day (or maybe it was the same day), and I accidentally let out my infamous dolphin noise, and it speedily sent the entire bus into a sudden state of awe, and when Ron Gunnell came walking down the center aisle of the bus towards the source of the sound of the hullabaloo, I didn't know what to do. All that was happening was my face -- turning red...
60) Dinnertime buffet-line moseytimes: "Oh! Is this arugula!? Do you know if it's in season? What about the romaine?????"
61) Gerry Graves' Darnitol infomercial. I think I may need summat...
62) Photobombing Camille's ancestor interview in the bus-to-Boston bus video. (Sorry, Camille! At least we were both wearing our thick-rimmed glasses and matching H&M dresses! So it was lovely! Right? Right? Haha I know you loved it :)
63) Learning that Mrs. Unsworth's first name is spelled exactly like mine is! Yay! It is the best way to spell it
64) Being instructed to shout at the tops of our lungs "BEAT NAVY!!!" before sitting down to the West Point mess hall tables to eat lunch
65) The ginormous bumblebee getting friendly with Melissa & me at the West Point sound check. It would not leave us alone. I swear that bees do it on purpose, just so that they can make Rachel laugh until she cries
66) Receiving the honor of being in one of Siope's Fashionista/isto-of-the-Day Facebook posts, with Petey
67) Singing "America the Beautiful" at the 9/11 memorial. I think we harmonized really well, and I think it did a nice job contributing to the reverence that is prevalent in that place
68) The Wang Theatre strangely was the only tour venue at which I was in the back row (which, on any normal day, is my usual spot). When we were singing "Betelehemu" at our final concert at the Wang, as the swaying was happening, the risers shook like mad and I thought maybe we were all gonna collapse to our doom on those risers, but we did not perish! We lived!
69) The doors found throughout the backstage-downstairs of the Wang......many of them had the word "Si" printed on them. Hoorah for mystic Spanish messages on puertas that seemingly don't make any sense!
70) At the end of Alex Boye's "I Want Jesus to Walk with Me" solo during the second Carnegie Hall concert... Upon Alex finishing his final note... There was one uber soulful audience member who reflexively shouted "Yes sir!" and that was outrageously awesome and it put outrageously huge smiles on our faces!
71) The way Mack always conducts the African-drum rolls towards the beginning of "Betelehemu" with his one pointer finger, and then shakes both his hands in the air for morrrrrrrrrrre drummmmmmmmmmmmm ... Dthrrrrrrrrrr!! Dthrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!! Dthrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!! Dddddttttthhhrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!!!!!!!
72) The way we knocked the socks off of every single person in the room with "I'm Runnin' On." The crowd went wild. Every.Time.
73) Our Sesame Street friends coming to our Carnegie Hall concert! They said at Christmastime that they would, and they weren't kidding! It was so stupendous to have them there! Rosita cried like eight times during the show
74) Strengthening friendships with such great people whom I know and love
75) Creating new great friendships with people I hadn't ever really talked to before. It is a joy to have those new friends in my life now!
76) Tour, all in all, was a marvelous missionary opportunity that significantly strengthened my testimony of the gospel of Jesus Christ. I'm so thankful for the blessing this tour has been for me, and I'm also very thankful that we, as the Mormon Tabernacle Choir organization, were able to bless and brighten the lives of thousands of God's children. "Only good can come from this tour of yours." ~Elder Rasband
