Posted by Rick Denney on June 03, 2003 at 16:29:43:
In Reply to: Re: extravagant student ensemble trips posted by Cheryl on June 01, 2003 at 14:01:25:
My niece went on one of those Carnegie Hall trips a couple of years ago, and my wife and I went to the concert to cheer her on. It was three days of utterly confusing, poorly planned, non-stop activity. The concert included her orchestra for five tunes, a succession of choral groups (three or four) for a tune or two each, and a performance by a local pickup orchestra, some local soloists, and another out-of-town choral group. I'd say that 500 people paid for the privelege of playing at Carnegie Hall that night, to an audience full of people from back home. My sister could have taken her whole family to New York for three days for what it cost to send one daughter on this trip.
I did enjoy sitting in the front box, seats 1 and 2, that are probably reserved for Really Important People at those concerts that New Yorkers would actually attend. But when you see the assembly-line shuffling of groups on and off the stage, the parents-only composition of the audience, and the kids standing unsupervised out on the back alley behind Carnegie Hall because the cops had forced the buses to clear the street, you realize that these trips aren't all that special and could actually be risky.
The kids who participated did so because their parents paid for it. I pity those kids whose parents could not afford it. Do you worry that it is a bit snobbish to think that the kids who didn't have the money would have to miss out on the one big activity of the semester? You probably didn't have any of those, because their parents were highly pressured to fork over the money no matter what it cost them.
When I was in high school, my band went to Disneyworld (from Houston) on a bus, with no music-playing involved. The next year, they went somewhere else, but I didn't go because the cost was too high. If the trip had been music-related, how would I have been able to rehearse with the band for the months leading up to the trip? I'd have had to give up my first chair because the band wouldn't be counting on me for the trip's bogus concert.
A musical trip experience really worth having is when your band is invited to play a major music conference, because it is good.
Rick "who wonders what culture can be found by 15-year-olds on the street behind Carnegie Hall" Denney