There's a BEAR on STAGE!

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A short photo essay by Dana. We kicked off our season this past Friday to a packed house at The Chapel!

We began the day with rehearsal at 10:00am. We hadn't seen each other since our marathon weekend of rehearsing Labor Day weekend. Two weeks without rehearsal is an eternity to musicians, but that's the way it worked out this time. We came into The Chapel to rehearse and found this:

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Why was there a giant bear playing the piano Jerry Lee Lewis style on stage? We have no idea, but we took it as a good omen.

We moved the bear to a more comfortable listening position, and commenced rehearsal.

Bear under piano

We had a few visitors stop by during rehearsal - one took some shots for us.

Rehearsing Beethoven

rehearsal

After rehearsal we got the chairs arranged for the concert. One of my favorite things is being in a venue when it's empty and know how transformed the space will be in just a few hours time.

setting up

We had record online ticket sales - and many more who braved the crazy traffic (we heard they closed Hampton it got so busy!) to make it to the concert.

The concert gets underway!

Tann

Nielsen

Kyle

The audience loved it - we got an enthusiastic "Standing O".

Standing O

Standing O2

Did you notice the bear during the concert? We think he enjoyed it too.

Thanks to everyone at The Chapel for volunteering their time to make this event happen! It was a spectacular way to kick off our season!