Choir teachers, students perform at Carnegie Hall

By Michelle Wallace

LITTLE ROCK — For Andrea Steward, “awesome” and “once in a lifetime” were the only ways to describe it.

Steward and Christy Fudge, choir teachers at Cedar Ridge High School and Newport High School, respectively, had just done something very few people can ever say they’ve done.

They had performed on the stage of the world-renowned Carnegie Hall.

Student Skyler Mays, a fellow singer, was awestruck as well. He found it difficult to absorb the reality of what was happening.

“When the choir arrived at Carnegie Hall I did not truly understand the magnitude or importance that it was for the choir to be singing there until we actually got in formation to prepare to start rehearsing on stage the day of the concert,” he said.

The two teachers and Mays, a 22-year-old student at Arkansas State University in Jonesboro and a graduate of Highland High School, along with Kathryn Fischer of Jacksonville, also an ASU student, were part of a choral group from ASU that visited New York City and performed at Carnegie Hall in January.

Fudge, of Newark, and Steward, of Oil Trough, are part of the ASU Community Singers. Mays and Fischer are among the University Singers.

Under the direction of Dale Miller, director of choral activities at ASU, the choir performed Mozart’s Coronation Mass on January 13.

Just getting to be on the stage was a thrill.

“It was awesome walking out on that stage,” Steward said. “I had chill bumps ... Tears welled up in my eyes.” There was a dress rehearsal onthe stage and then the performance.

“It was a packed house,” Steward recalled, adding that the venue seats about 2,800 people.

The teachers couldn’t help but reflect on the historical importance of the hall.

“There is 100-plus years of American music history there,” Steward pointed out. “You are sharing the stage with so many performers [who came] before you.

Fudge concurred.

“The history was overwhelming,” she said.

The rest of the choir felt the same.

“It seemed [our] tiredness from touring New York washed completely away, and a whole new wave of energy formed around our chorale conductor, Dr. Dale Miller, and the choir as a whole to do the best we could on a stage that had seen the per formances of many great musical phenomena,” Mays said.

“When the concert actually began and we began to sing “Kyrie” from Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Coronation Mass, I could tell that most of the performers were either scared or nervous because they were not moving a single muscle except for their mouths to sing, and in my case in some parts of the mass it was hard to even move ... as I looked out and saw thousands of audience members.”

Fudge had rehearsed as the alto soloist for this performance but wasn’t able to actually carry out her solo because as a nonunion artist, she was not permitted to sing solo with union members on stage, she explained. She didn’t find that out until the day of the performance, but she snuck her solo in as the choir was exiting the stage after their rehearsal. It was exhilarating to sing solo on that famous stage, even if for only a few seconds, she recalled. She did perform the solo during the choir’s preview performance back in November.

She went with the ASU choir to Poland in 2006 and performed her solo there.

This trip to New York City was the third performance of the ASU choir for Mid-American Production’s Carnegie Hall Concert Series. The concert series was a five-day event that featured talented conductors, orchestras and choirs from around the world.

The chance to sing in Carnegie Hall is a stunning addition to a long list of musical accomplishments for these artists.

Steward, who teaches vocal music to seventh- through 12thgraders in the Cedar Ridge School District in Independence County, started her musical career at the tender age of 6 when she began taking piano lessons. She holds a bachelor’s degree in music education from Lyon College in Batesville and a master’s degree in conducting from ASU. She conducts the North Arkansas Youth Orchestra at Lyon College.

She has taught music at schools in Sulphur Rock and Newport, the same position Fudge now holds.

Fudge is the choir director for junior and senior high students in Newport and also teaches color guard and winter guard in Newport. She discovered a love for singing when she was in seventh grade and completed her degree in vocal music education at ASU in 2004. She won the talent show at Portfestlast year and takes her students to contests as well.

Fudge and Miller encouraged Steward to make the choir trip to New York City this year.

“Dr. Miller invited me last year. He told me, ‘Think about it. Think about what you’ll have to bring back to your kids,’” she said. “Christy Fudge really pushed me to go.”

Their schools and families were a big encouragement and support, too.

“Cedar Ridge was very supportive and very proud of this opportunity,” Steward said. “My family really encouraged me to do this, especially my husband. It was just great to have all his support.”

Her two sons, 11 and 9, both budding musicians themselves, thought it was great that their mom could sing at Carnegie Hall.

Fudge’s school and her husband, the band director at Newport, were likewise supportive.

Mays, the son of Danny and Andrea Mays, became involved in choir at the Highland School District and worked with directors Dan Sheets and Angela Storms.

The community singers, including Steward and Fudge, were responsible for their expenses incurred for the trip. The university singers, including Mays and Fischer, received assistance from President’s Partners funds and covered the rest of the cost themselves or through fundraisers, Miller said.

The group was in the Big Apple January 10-14 and had the chance to experience much of the city in addition to performing in front of thousands of people at Carnegie Hall.

Steward and Fudge took in the Broadway musical Wicked.

The sights of New York City were enthralling as well, from acruise around the Statue of Liberty to a trip to Grand Central Station.

Times Square was particularly fascinating for Mays.

“When the choir first got there on January 10 and settled in at our hotel, the Grand Hyatt, we all went to explore the town, which for most of us began on Times Square because it was [within] walking distance from the hotel. Times Square was nothing short of breathtaking. It seemed everywhere we stopped and looked, we wanted to take a picture because we hadn’t seen so many skyscrapers and people all in one place. Everywhere we went in and around Times Square, we saw things that we only see in movies and on television.”

Members of the choir also visited the NBC Studios, Rockefeller Center, the World Trade Center site and the Empire State Building.

The Arkansas visitors even managed to get themselves on television.

Mays ventured down to the Good Morning America studio by himself one day while the choir was in town, and he met and was photographed with hosts Diane Sawyer and Chris Cuomo. He also met the audience coordinator and promised her he’d bring the entire choir back. Sure enough, he brought them all back on their last day in town.

“[The audience coordinator] put all of the ASU choir members in front so whenever they aired the show, we would be front and center in front of America and so that our families would be able to see us all,” Mays said.

In true choir fashion, they sang the ASU alma mater for all of America to hear. It was almost like they were back at Carnegie Hall.

Three Rivers, Pages 110, 119 on 03/16/2008