Brush with Fame

A lot of times, friends complain to me that they want to come see me perform, but they never have a chance to see me because I don't tell them far enough ahead of time. I see their point...after all, it's not like I have a mailing list anymore, and usually when I think to tell friends about upcoming concerts, I do so a day or even hours before a performance.

My reply to those friends, however, is that if you really want to see me perform, you can just go on my website to the events page, and thanks to the wonders of Google Calendar, I have embedded an automatically updated calendar of all my upcoming concerts, both in NY and Philadelphia.

But I know we all are a passive lot. We don't want to have to go out and find information, we want it delivered to us. And we don't want just any information; we want to pick and choose who tells us what, and how often. And let's face it: I could put together a mailing list—heck, I have a mailing list—but you, my audience, keep changing your email addresses without telling me, relegating my list to the junk mail folder, and I don't want to be a spammer. Hence the blog you can read at your convenience and the calendar you can access whenever you want.

The other reason I don't actively advertise my performances is because I'm tired of the disappointment that inevitably happens when friends say, "Oh sure, I'll be there" and either cancel at the last minute or say later that they couldn't afford the ticket. I'm poor and I'm busy too, so I understand when someone gives me that excuse, but then I stop believing they actually want to see me.

Okay, the self-pity portion of this post is over.

Tonight I sang in the U.S. premiere of "Ecce Cor Meum" by Paul McCartney at Carnegie Hall. If any of you are now smacking your heads and saying, "Why didn't you tell me?" see above. I know probably more of you would have been interested in going to this concert rather than the last few concerts (Prokoviev's Alexander Nevsky, Debussy's Nocturnes) simply because Paul McCartney's celebrity far outshines that of the New York Philharmonic and eclipses The Philadelphia Singers completely. But to be honest, even if I knew people wanted to see it, I thought the concert would have sold out way in advance. Imagine my surprise when I saw empty seats.

Apparently lots of famous people showed up to the concert, however. Fellow choristers reported sightings of Woody Harrelson, Alec Baldwin, and Jerry Seinfeld. I think I passed Clint Eastwood in the hall after the show, but I was more interested in getting my jacket and leaving that it didn't register until the girl in front of me said, "Hey, that was Clint Eastwood."

Paul McCartney showed up to all of our rehearsals. There were a lot of choristers who approached him with records and books they wanted him to sign, but I was too shy. I thought of taking a candid picture of him, but I felt like that was really too paparazzi, so I hung back. Some people brought their cameras on stage, and I did too, although there were all sorts of signs backstage saying that photography on the stage level was forbidden. But when Paul came out on stage, I couldn't make myself take a picture. I guess I'm too much of a goody two-shoes.

However, when we left the stage at the end of the concert, Paul was there, greeting all the performers one by one. He was kissing all the women on the cheek, and when it was my turn, he said in that famous Liverpool accent, "Pucker up," and we exchanged cheek kisses.

So although the only tangible evidence of my brush with fame is probably a few of his skin cells on my left cheek (and I don't think I can bring myself to never wash that cheek again), I will always have the memory of the night I kissed Paul McCartney. And that's something nobody can buy on eBay.

If you're bummed you missed the concert, you can hear it in streaming audio on www.npr.org. I'm in the alto section...see if you can pick out my voice!