Crisis Averted

On Wednesday morning, I woke up, checked my e-mail, and discovered a disaster in progress: the church hosting the Voci concert scheduled for Saturday afternoon had booked a wedding for the same day, and the concert was now without a home! We have been advertising our concert, selling tickets, and our commissioned composer is flying in with his entire family to hear the new piece he wrote for us. Our poor administrator (T) found this out late Tuesday night, and spent the night having anxiety dreams about our homeless choir. (I often check my e-mail fairly late at night, but was tired enough on Tuesday to go to bed early, which saved ME from a sleepless night.)

The women of Voci are very impressive. We are all busy people, with full-time jobs, kids, etc., but we leapt into action. Calls were made to churches, pleas were sent out by e-mail, and by lunchtime we had two churches that were willing and able to host us for a concert three days later. Church A is a place I'd sung before; a friend from another choir called the church on our behalf (she's a member there) and verified that they were free on Saturday, all within twenty minutes of my initial e-mail plea. They were not available for us to rehearse that night (our previously scheduled rehearsal night), but could accommodate us on Thursday evening instead. Church B had an office administrator that said the space was free, but we had to get the permission of the music director to use the organ & piano.

All day, T had been leaving frantic messages for our music director, J. By 3:30 pm, we had not heard back from either J or the MD of Church B, so T made the executive decision that we would hold rehearsal at our usual time and place, while continuing to research our performance venue. At 4:45, the board president and I met at Church A to tour the space. It looked perfect for our needs, and their administrator (a choir director herself) was extremely sympathetic and helpful. In the meantime, J finally checked his messages (he had been giving exams all day), and confirmed with T that Church A would be workable. Problem solved!