It\u2019s been said so often over the years that it\u2019s practically a clich\u00e9, but just about every musician worth his or her salt dreams of performing at Carnegie Hall. There are certainly larger venues around North America, but none has the prestige of the New York landmark. While in the modern era, the thought of such a feat usually rests with bands or solo artists, the dream will come true in March for a local community choir, the Peninsula Singers. The Point Loma-based group will join eight other choruses from around the U.S. that were invited to perform at the revered venue. On Friday, March 5, the Peninsula Singers will perform a special Carnegie Hall send-off concert featuring Beethoven\u2019s Mass in C Major. Nearly 53 members of the 70-person choir will be heading to the East Coast. “We were nominated to be a part of this following a Christmas concert at Southwestern College in 2008,” explained chorus manager Gary Ewing. “We can hardly believe we\u2019re doing this. We\u2019re so excited. Carnegie Hall invites groups like ours once or twice a year to participate in a special event. We\u2019ve basically spent the last year getting everything ready.” To date, Ewing estimates the Peninsula Singers have played to more than 10,000 people at venues ranging from the USS Midway museum to Balboa Park\u2019s annual December Nights program. “We\u2019re fortunate in that we\u2019ve sold out almost every show in our six years, but it\u2019s tough with an organization like ours,” Ewing said. “Expenses for every show can be daunting, everything from the bleachers for the audience to a sound system adds up.” The chorus members had to raise their own funds to attend. “We did everything we could think of to get us there,” Ewing said. “Garage sales, car washes, some restaurants even donated a percentage of a night\u2019s earnings.” Luckily, several organizations, including The Ocean Beach Community Foundation, Friends of The Hervy Family Point Loma Branch Library and the Point Loma Community Bank, have stepped up to help. Ewing said the Carnegie Hall event will be a much bigger affair than they usually play, even without taking into account the historic nature of the venue. The concert itself will be a huge undertaking, with all nine choirs joining forces along with a symphony, under the direction of John Rutter. “There will be 262 singers onstage at the same time,” Ewing said. “It\u2019s an hour-long performance, all in Latin. We\u2019re all doing rehearsals with our own groups at home, but once we get to New York, we\u2019ll be doing another 10 hours on top of that with everyone present. It\u2019s almost overwhelming, but so exciting.” Both the Peninsula Singers\u2019 artistic director Susan Suhonen and pianist Stewart Simon will go along for the trip, though Simon will be singing. “He\u2019s always dreamed of playing Carnegie Hall as a concert pianist, so it\u2019s ironic that he\u2019s going to finally get to take that stage as a singer,” Ewing said. Although putting the trip together has been a major undertaking, Ewing said it was all worth the effort. “It\u2019s really pulled our chorus together. We\u2019re united and it feels like a family,” Ewing said. “But what I really like is watching the chorus members having fun singing. We have members from high school age to one gentleman who is 87 years old, and I\u2019m so proud of them.” The Peninsula Singers launch their send-off concert Friday, March 5 at 7 p.m. at the North Chapel in Liberty Station, 2881 Roosevelt Road. Tickets are $10. and the performance is open to all ages.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It\u2019s been said so often over the years that it\u2019s practically a clich\u00e9, but just about every musician worth his or her salt dreams of performing at Carnegie Hall. There are certainly larger venues around North America, but none has the prestige of the New York landmark. While in the modern era, the thought of […]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":726,"featured_media":273369,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"11561","_seopress_titles_title":"Chorus lands lifetime dream with Carnegie Hall gig","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[11549,11561,11550],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-273368","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arts-entertainment","category-peninsula-beacon","category-top-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273368","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/726"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=273368"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273368\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/273369"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=273368"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=273368"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=273368"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}