Marisa Curbelo, a junior music therapy major from Cape Coral, wrote this first-person account of the Wind Orchestra’s trip to New York for FGCU360
This past Thanksgiving will be one that I will cherish forever.
Performing at Carnegie Hall has always been a dream of mine, and I never thought that I would actually have a chance to fulfill this dream. Arriving at the Music Building at 2:30 a.m. Nov. 25, it still did not seem real to me that we were leaving for New York. Everyone was wide awake, excited and full of energy, while I sat in my seat, listening to the conversations, to my friends laughing and thinking to myself, “This will never happen again.” We arrived at the airport and immediately boarded the plane, leaving our sunny home behind us. Next stop, New York!
After a two-hour drive to Tampa and two hours in the plane, we finally made it to the Big Apple. The bus driver took us to our hotel and we were dismissed for a few hours to get food and explore the city. The city was illuminated by the abundance of advertising screens that hung by all the buildings. Even though it was 8 a.m., everything looked so much brighter than normal because of the screens. The very first thing I needed to cross off my list was to eat a street vendor hotdog, and I was not let down. We wandered down Times Square and tried to keep up with the rush of the crowd, but in the back of our minds, we knew we had to be ready for our rehearsal. Our first rehearsal was an interesting one. All of the low brass and percussion instruments were loaded onto an Enterprise truck that was driving up from school. Unfortunately, that truck was late by over an hour.
Regardless of the lack of instruments, we started rehearsal with the woodwinds playing their parts, the brass players singing ours, and percussion doing the best they could. Sitting there I figured this would be our one moment for something to go wrong, this had to be our bad luck, and I was perfectly fine with that because it was only our first day there. When we heard the truck made it to the hotel, we rushed down to grab our instruments and set up for a complete run-through of our performance. We were focused, determined, and ready to make this music sound better than it ever did, and we were pretty close to doing that.
On Thursday, we were able to do whatever we wanted. We saw the floats and balloons pass by from the Macy’s parade and afterwards we made our way to Rockefeller Center. Seeing the city from the Top of the Rock was breath taking. It is hard to imagine that there are so many people and so many buildings all in one area, especially when you are like me, from little old Cape Coral. Our day was filled with adventure, laughter, food and magic, but there was a feeling that surrounded us that we needed to come down from our excitement just a notch and focus on what we had come there to do. Friday came and we were ready to have the performance of a lifetime.
Friday we met for one more rehearsal in the hotel and the room buzzed with the chatter of excitement and nerves. Students, like me, had family coming up to see us perform and all I wanted to do was give them hugs. We made our way to Carnegie, everyone dressed in tuxedos and black dresses, pushing our way through the crowd and down the street. Looking at the hall from the outside, it was as if it were just another building; there was nothing extravagant or special about the outside, but that all changed once we walked in.
Everyone’s mouths dropped when we set foot on the stage for our sound check. The hall is colored white, with gold trimmings while the seats were red. It was astounding to see that this was the inside of the building that did not look of any importance at all from the outside. We sat down and played our first piece. As we reached the end, I knew what was going to happen next…the ring. We played our last note as an ensemble and the hall rang with our chord. Everyone looked around in amazement and awe at how gorgeous the sound was. I remember sitting there thinking, “This will never happen again.”
We played our concert and needless to say, it was the best performance to date. We were engulfed in our music, focused on how to be the very best we could be, and we achieved that goal. I am beyond blessed to have had this opportunity and to share it with all of my friends and family members. The Bower School of Music & the Arts has achieved a landmark. Never again will any other university, or even our own program, be able to re-create the performance we had that night. That night was our time to show everyone who we are, and that will never happen again.
- Read more about the orchestra’s trip