Chapter 90

After the break was over, I said, “Everybody not yet in a musical number ... please stand?”

Geez ... there were ... nine-teen... “OK, this next number is called ‘Spring Pageant.’ I want Sofia, Shirley, Lily, Martha and Emma to start the song as the main choir. Jeff Newman, you will be the Pageant Director. Pageant Boys one and two will be Rich and John Mitchell. Pageant Trolls will be Daniel, Sam and Geoff. Lastly, the Pageant Girls 3, 4, 5, and 6 are Mary, Anna, Nancy and Maria.”

“Everybody got their part ... any questions?”

“Who gets that final line?” Rose asked.

“You do, since you asked,” I said getting a great smile from her. “Don’t worry folks, we have one more big number after this with at least a dozen people.”

“Cathy, are you ready?”

“As long as you direct, I am, Boss. There is a lot of stopping and starting the way I see it.”

“Don’t worry Miss Amos. Everybody ready?”...

ALL OF THEM
Winter’s gone and Spring is springing
Shines the sun with warmth of old
Ding-dong! Ding-dong!
Chapel bells are ringing!
We’re done with being cold

Flowers a-bloom with odors pleasant,
All of Arendelle is glad!
Mother Earth, we
thank you for the presents!
Spring’s good and winter’s bad.

Winter’s gone and Spring is springing,
Shines the sun with warmth of old.
Ding-dong! Ding-dong!
Chapel bells are ringing!
We’re done with being cold
Brrrrrrr!

PAGEANT DIRECTOR
Good! And exeunt group.
Narrator’s come down stage,
with confidence!

PAGEANT KID 1
We celebrate spring,
We know once it’s here,
The ancient troll prophecy
Won’t come to pass this year. Phew

PAGEANT KID 2
What is this prophecy?
What did it say?
Well, that is the subject
of our little play!

PAGEANT DIRECTOR
Where are my trolls?
I need my trolls!

PAGEANT TROLLS
Your future is bleak
Your kingdom will splinter
Your land shall be cursed...
(They break into loud giggles, purposefully)

PAGEANT DIRECTOR
STOP! Stop these shenanigans!
This is not some silly
comedy, Nils Norberg,
this is the Trolls’ Prophecy.
This could be our fate.
Give me your gum?
Take it from “your future is bleak.”

PAGEANT TROLLS
Your future is bleak
Your kingdom will splinter
Your land shall be cursed
With unending winter

PAGEANT DIRECTOR
Good. Going on.

PAGEANT KID 3
With blasts of cold will come dark art,
PAGEANT KID 4
And a ruler with a frozen heart!
PAGEANT KID 5
Then all will perish in snow and ice!
PAGEANT KIDS ALL
Unless you are freed with a sword sacrifice!

PAGEANT KID 4 What’s a sword sacrifice?
PAGEANT KID 3 Beats me.

PAGEANT DIRECTOR
Quiet!

PAGEANT KID 6
But Frozen starvation
is not today’s fate!
Plus we have an EXTRA special cause to celebrate!

The most gracious, gorgeous, smartest, kindest, absolutely perfect...

PAGEANT DIRECTOR
That will do.

PAGEANT KID 6
Role model this land has ever seen!
Princess Elsa! I really love her! Becomes our Queen!

ROSE
Look! There she is!

They all enjoyed doing that, and everyone else also did.

“Marvelous ... Next up will be a song that was replaced by ‘For The First Time In Forever Reprise,’ it’s called ‘Life’s Too Short,’ and may or may not be used in our concert. I need my Anna and Elsa please?”

It ends with some measures of music from “Do You Want To Build A Snowman.” There wasn’t much applause, just a swell of tears from the entire cast.

The last big number of FROZEN is “Fixer-Upper,” and I had a few ideas in store for it.

“Joan, you will be Bulda. Carla will be Pebble, Johnny will be Kai, James is Oaken with both Jeff’s, Jorge, Carlos, and Steve the male trolls and Sofia, Emma, Zoe and Lily will be the female trolls!”

Joan, after settling down with James, has become a very steadied performer. Her and the others did a fine job for a first time through, and can only get better! Little Carla is so cute and darling.

“Just like something from a Disney movie,” I said leading the applause. “But, better.”

They all had fun hugging and slapping each other over that.

I saw Brian getting up to take a phone call. I casually followed him, then he turned to me and said in his mouthpiece, “Of course Kristen ... Michael could have a few numbers for you and Robert to come and listen to, anything specific?”

“OK, all right... ‘Let It Go,’ ‘For The First Time In Forever,’ ‘Love Is An Open Door’ and ‘Fixer-Upper.’ How soon can you come to a rehearsal?”

“Yes, as a matter of fact, we are having our second rehearsal as we speak. The sooner the better, of course. My son, the conductor, has just finished casting the show, and is planning to use a few of your ‘outtake songs.’ That’s part of why we would prefer to have you listen to them live instead of sending you a tape or a CD. Wonderful. See you on this coming Sunday, I will get you and your husband the details. Thank you very much.”

“YES,” I said, getting everyone’s attention.

I explained to them, what just happened, and all kinds of cheers exploded all over the place. After they all settled down, we went through those four numbers two more times each.

Wednesday, the following day, Nancy was back although Cathy showed up, after our bus got everyone else to our place. I had gotten one of my synthesizers out with a chair for our second keyboardist.

I had all the adults there as well, giving me an opportunity.

“Hey everyone.”

“Hey Michael,” I got back.

“It seems the newbies have been trained well. Before we practice anything, I want to bring up a possibility of a 40 to 44 Day Tour of some kind starting a week after school is out and getting you home a week before school starts back up in August. Before you ask me any questions, all I have is the concept, twenty to thirty cities starting from Vincennes. Brian ... dad, have we got any leads to do something like this yet?”

“Not really, but it’s over four months away, so anything could be planned in that amount of time.”

“Thanks, so, without everyone talking at once, does anybody have a place we haven’t yet gone? Only the conterminous United States, please?”

“What’s that mean?” Pippa, one of our violinists asked.

“Only the ‘lower’ 48 states. That means the states that touch other states. Alaska and Hawaii are not included, for obvious reasons.”

“Thank you, Boss,” she said getting a set of giggles from around the group.

“Stuart, you mentioned North Dakota to me once, besides being cold year round, what’s there?”

“Right now, there is so much oil ... everyone in the state is very rich. Only those who want to work do work. There is a lot of money to go around, meaning we could have a concert in practically any city, charge $500 per person and fill the place.”

That caused everyone to go “Wow,” or something like it.

“I looked it up myself, in June it’s average temperature is the high seventies, but it gets down to the low 20s at night.”

The shivers went through the place with that news.

“I know we wouldn’t really charge anybody $500 each,” Princess said, “But, if we did, how much would that be for each of us?”

Doing the math in my head, “Let’s say, we found a place that held 5,000 people ... that would mean just over $9,000 per each member of the GSS.”

“I have grandparents in Minneapolis, who would love to see us perform. They are too old to travel to Indiana,” Juan Scott said.

“Anybody else on the west side of the great lakes?”

Mary Mitchell stood and said, “We have family in Missoula, Montana. It’s about 115,000 people with not a lot of things to do unless you travel to Yellowstone National Park or Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument.”

“It does help you connect to Caspar, Wyoming to the south or Salt Lake City to the Southwest,” I said remembering the US map very clearly in my head. “From there we could head south and find a stage to play on in Las Vegas, or north to Boise, Idaho and Portland, Oregon ... then onto Seattle and/or Spokane, Washington...”

“Wait a minute, Michael ... how are you doing that without looking at a map?” Miss Cathy Amos asked.

Princess said, “After Math, his next best subject in Geography. He knows cities, capitals, other countries ... it’s really amazing sometimes.”

“After Washington State, we have got Missoula or Billings, then either go back to North Dakota or drop down to South Dakota finding our way back to Indiana. That might all take close to seven weeks, but you could each earn upwards of $65,000 each, depending on the size of the venues involved. I have just decided two things, tomorrow our rehearsal is in the other building where we have room for everyone, and...”

“Cathy Amos ... please stand? Nancy please come over as well.”

I just happened to have a GSS necklace in my pocket and I pulled it out. “Does anyone disagree that Cathy should be a full member from this point on?”

I gave it to Nancy who put it on a very nervous Cathy, and gave her a kiss on the cheek. “Number 109.”

“Brian, make sure she gets the form before she leaves, please?”

“Sure thing, Boss.”

“Let’s all sing some music, why don’t we?” A very large roar came from them all.

“Our most difficult number first, “Spring Pageant, ladies?”

Everyone involved got up, with their words and music in hand. “Memorize before this Sunday, you all know why.”

I stopped this more than a few times, giving some performance notes. They almost sounded too good, but I wasn’t about to ask them to degrade their developing talents. This number is going near the beginning of the concert, although I’m not sure where?

It sounded so much better in less than 24 hours from the first time through. This would be my first encore piece, if the Lopez’s want one.

I let them all sit, and called up my Jennifer. I reminded her to sing “Let It Go” as Jennifer, not Idina. I gave her a peck on the lips and the two keyboards sounded remarkable as she began the song.

She sang the whole song with her head voice, an option very few sopranos can do. The clearness of her tone was making me cry as I conducted the three of them.

They all ended together, causing the rest of my singers to applaud very loudly. I gave her another kiss, then she sat down.

“OK, everybody... ‘Fixer-Upper,’”

Before they started it up, I gave some general musical instruction regarding how their voices should sound. I wanted a few character voices, especially the voice of Pebble, the little girl who has a few key lines in the song...

And off they went, with Kristoff and Anna looking appropriately perplexed ... as they should.

Joan was sounding marvelous as the lead singer Bulda in this number. When we have the full orchestra, I’m going to have Jennie give the singers some usable dance moves. I had thought of giving Princess an adlib, like “He’s more of a brother than anything else,” but I fought the urge.

After going through each of the numbers the writers selected, we worked on the other ones just in case.

Peter had his wife make him a better looking ‘Sven’ puppet than just my sock. Not bad! We did both of his numbers ... I was still unsure if I was going to use the remix or not.

I do plan to use both “You’re You” and “Love Is An Open Door” successively. They seem to work pretty well together with the first song bridging to the second.

Afterward, I was pretty sure of my singers ... now to bring in the orchestra on Saturday.

First things first on Saturday, was the rehearsal of SIDE BY SIDE BY SONDHEIM, which with Paul and Cece back was in very good shape. All the ‘couples’ I made-up seem to be working out just fine.

The Planck’s told me that SUNDAY IN THE PARK WITH GEORGE was really turning into a labor of love. The set had arrived, and was being put together by those students who we got into doing backstage work during WICKED.

With both of the productions happening in just over a month, with us going first, this was a nice pace to be working at. That also meant we had auditions coming up very soon ... Jackson Heights putting on MUSIC MAN, Lincoln High doing a SWEET CHARITY Concert and GSS putting on NEWSIES, also as a concert.

A problem I see is that Princess is a lock for Marion Paroo in MUSIC MAN and is also the singer/dancer to beat for the role of Charity Hope Valentine. I need to find out which part she wants worse as carefully as I can.

SATURDAY
A large contingency of people filled Lincoln High Auditorium for a full day of rehearsals. I had a pill with my breakfast and we headed to get there early.

I asked the girls to leave Stu and I alone to talk, which they did taking Tracy and Andrew with them. We discussed both shows separately, with ‘Side by Side’ being very simple compared to FROZEN.

The stage was ready; the actors/performers were looking functionally nervous. Everyone had on a cheek mic, as I had on my two-way I typically wore. I turned to talk to my actors.

“OK, Ladies and gentlemen ... you all are very talented, but this is where the rubber meets the road. You have your first audience of consequence, think of them in their underwear, or whatever works for you. When you aren’t performing, pay attention.
I almost went down to conduct, but this was Mr. Bell’s turn, so I stayed up on stage.

Starting with the married couple, Paul and Cece began the morning. Everyone had been practicing on their own, because it all looked and sounded, so comfortable ... like they were couples. Have I done it again, starting some love affairs?

Exactly one hundred minutes later, it was over. Some, but not all the teachers left. We switched from the Lincoln orchestra to the Primary GSS ... everyone stayed. I called a break, more for me than anyone else. I sat between Pippa and Genny, both giggling a little.

I turned to Pippa and asked, “Do you have a boyfriend yet, young lady?”

“He’s not really my boyfriend, but Peter Thomas and I have become good friends.”

“My goodness, he’s six years older than you,” I said with a smile.

“I will be twelve in March and he just turned seventeen,” she said very satisfied with her point.

I took another drink of water, and then Genny asked, “How many girlfriends do you have at the moment, Michael?”

“All together, I would say at least seventeen, so far.” I said making her giggle. I gave them each a kiss on the cheek, finished the water and got up in front of the almost ready-to-go orchestra.

“Stuart, pipe me through please?”

“Only if you tell me the other fifteen girls first,” he said.

“Stuart!”

“OK Boss.”

Under my breath, I said, “Tech people are so emotional sometimes.”

“I love you man,” Stu said with a fake cry in his voice.

“OKAY PEOPLE, ARE YOU READY FOR FROZEN?”

I heard the performers off-stage, and many of the orchestra all answered me loud and clear...

I began with the beautiful musical instrumental piece “Whiteout,” turning almost immediately to the men coming out to sing “Frozen Heart.” I want it to almost sound like a single piece of music.

Stu went from all white lights moving all around for the first number, then only used overhead stage lights to illuminate the men.

From there, everyone came out to start “Spring Pageant,” and it was well done, and well-received by our audience.

Next up was the new number, “We Know Better” using the people from before, except the baby cries came from off-stage, by Lily Newman. A light moved from each two girls as the number progressed to Isabel and Jennifer.

Everybody really liked that number, and made lots of noise to show their appreciation.

They all left, except Princess who wanted everyone to hear her ‘one-person’ version of “Do You Want To Build A Snowman?”

It was very well received, to the point that is what I will show the Lopez’s the next day. After the applause, she stayed out to sing “More Than Just The Spare.” Also, very well received.

Jennifer came out to applause and they together sang “For The First Time In Forever,” to a standing ovation.

When over, Jennifer left and Juan came out on stage and he and Princess sang, “You’re You,” and right when the applause went down, I began “Love Is An Open Door,” which with some work from Jennie, was a quite lovely song with some marvelous dance moments. Juan seemed a natural. He smiled at my little sister the whole time.

At the end, when they talk about getting married, she gave him a kiss which kind of flustered him a bit, but they got it together and left to wonderful applause.

“TEN MINUTE BREAK.” I said.

I was surrounded by my main girls, “How are you feeling, Michael?” Jennifer said.

“I’m OK ... just taking it easy. I don’t know if I will have an intermission or not.”

“You need to. Jennifer needs to show how beautiful she is and how fantastic she sings,” Princess said.

“Thank you, sweetie,” Jenn said to Isabel. “You are so talented yourself.”

“Personally, I can’t decide who is more talented, Jenn has the voice and the body ... Princess has the dancing skills and the body.”

“Are you saying that I can’t sing?” she said with a smirk.

“I was just listing the greater of all of your talents. Jenn, Stuart has something he wants to show me during “Let It Go” ... I don’t know what. Just do your best. I want you to have a silver long flowing dress by the time we actually go on ... OK? It can be a reasonably deep V-neck. Princess not quite as deep.”

I took a bottle from my backpack, drained it and sat by Cathy for a moment. “Thank you so much for letting me be part of the GSS. When you want to play, I can help on the percussion, especially once we get those beautiful instruments you have at your home. I have been training on the xylophone and the marimba, if case you didn’t know. Also, I plan to stay with the GSS for as long as you will have me.”

“That’s really good to know sweetie,” I said to her. “Remind me please, how old are you?”

“Thirteen, I will turn fourteen on the June Tour.”

“That’s a wonderfully positive thing to say.” I gave her a kiss on the cheek.

I got back up as the rest of the orchestra got in place.

“Number eighteen, Michael?” I heard in my ear.

“Oh, shut up,” I said, “Or, I will tell Princess I caught you and Sarah Kent making out with you trying to get to second base?”

“I never did any such thing?”

“That won’t matter if I tell her about it, will it?”

“Don’t you have a show to conduct?” he said to me.

“I can’t wait to see what you have planned for ‘Let It Go’” I said as I got up ready to begin.

Although it is out of sequence, I took a number called “The North Mountain” and made it my entr’acte. Barely ninety seconds long, it helps set the mood for Jennifer and her big song.

As I began the short intro before the singing, the lights resembling a winter snow began to ‘fall,’ and it looked miraculous as the piano begins...

JENNIFER
The snow glows white
on the mountain tonight
Not a footprint to be seen
A kingdom of isolation,
and it looks like I’m a Queen.
The wind is howling like
this swirling storm inside
couldn’t keep it in,
heaven knows I’ve tried

Let it go, let it go
Can’t hold it back anymore
Let it go, let it go
Turn away and slam the door{br}

I don’t care
What they’re going to say
Let the storm rage on,
The cold never
bothered me anyway

(Interlude)

It’s funny how some distance
Makes everything seem small
And the fears that once controlled me
Can’t get to me at all
It’s time to see what I can do
To test the limits and break through
No right, no wrong, no rules for me
I’m free{br}

(Major Belt)

Let it go, let it go
I’m one with the wind and sky
Let it go, let it go
You’ll never see me cry
Here I stand
And here I ‘l stay
Let the storm rage on

My power flurries through
the air into the ground
My soul is spiraling in
frozen fractals all around
And one thought crystalizes
like an icy blast
I’m never going back,
The past is in the past{br}

Let it go, let it go
When I’ll rise
like the break of dawn
Let it go, let it go
That perfect girl is gone{br}

Here I stand
In the light of day
Let the storm rage on...
The cold never
bothered me anyway

For a spilt second there was no sound at all, then the applause began ... a really massive applause. I turned to the audience and saw a family behind everyone else. It was the Lopez family. I did a two-finger salute, which they did back.

“Come on people, we have eight more numbers to do ... then I plan to gorge myself with food from McDonalds.”

She left, and Kristoff came on with his Sven puppet. Jason played this on the guitar by himself.

After doing it the best ever, he threw Sven into the wings. I hope somebody caught it. Princess came out, then Charles rolled out on his roller skates to a marvelous applause.

KRISTOFF
Really? I’m guessing you don’t have much experience with heat.

(Music begins)

OLAF
Nope! But sometimes
I like to close my eyes,
and imagine what it’d be like
when summer does come.

(He starts rolling backwards)

(Singing)
Bees will buzz; kids will
blow dandelion fuzz
And I will be doing whatever
snow does in summer.

A drink in my hand,
my snow up against
the burning sand
Prob’ly getting gorgeously
tanned in summer.

(He looked quite natural as he stopped, to sing)

I’ll finally see a summer breeze,
blow away a winter storm.
And find out what happens
to solid water when it gets warm!

And I can’t wait to see,
what my buddies all think of me.
Just imagine how much
cooler I’ll be in summer.

(He did a spin, in place)

Dah dah, da doo, uh
bah bah bah bah bah boo