Star Wars In Concert

"Star Wars In Concert" came to town, and I got to sing in the chorus!! It was so freakin' cool!! Anthony Daniels, more commonly known as C3PO, did narrations in between all the songs. I was ON STAGE with C3PO!!

Back when the original movies were made, George Lucas had basically no money, so he couldn't hire a choir to sing on the sound tracks. When it came to the newer set of movies, the whole franchise was a huge money-maker, so they sprung for the choir. That means now when they do this traveling show, they need a choir. But the touring company can't justify paying a choir to go with them everywhere, so they pull together choirs from the cities where they go. I think they've been stuck with some sub-par church choirs in some other places.

There was a matinée and an evening show. Before the afternoon show, Anthony Daniels came back stage and addressed the choir. He was right there, not 10 feet from me as he did his little spiel. "It's the story of a gold robot..." Ha ha... He's the only guy in all 6 Star Wars movies. I hadn't really thought about that before today. He talked about the choir being on the dark side. And we were. All dressed in black, and the songs we were singing for were very dark. We were Darth Choir. Anyway, before the second show, he had us all squish together and he posed with us for pictures. There were only 2 people between me and him. So very cool. (Hopefully the picture will be posted to facebook soon.) By the way, he looks basically like the picture I've posted here, only his hair is completely white, and he wasn't carrying around a C3PO head.

The choir sat right behind the most amazing percussion section I've ever seen. We were close enough to touch them. It was pretty tight quarters. The show opened with the orchestra playing the 20th Century Fox fanfare. It was so neat to be right there in the middle of it! And then after that, they played the main theme. So cool. Then Anthony Daniels talked (we couldn't understand it because it was so echo-y it was all garbled by the time the sound got to us). Then we sang. The opening of that song was just us, and then the orchestra came in, like they were accompanying us. They were the best orchestra I've ever sung with, hands down.

Since our songs were just in the first act, we got to go sit in the audience after intermission and watch the second act. It was so cool. In fact, we choristers kept saying that to each other the whole day. There was a whole lot of hurry up and wait, but it was so worth it. When will have this kind of opportunity again?

The songs we sang for were "Duel of the Fates," and "Battle of the Heroes," and of course, those are the songs in my head! My nerdy, totally geeking-out head is swimming with John Williams!