What’s it like to perform at the Smith Center? Sun staffer goes onstage and finds out

By Richard N. Velotta

Tuesday, March 27, 2012 | 2 a.m.

I’m going to go out on a limb and say I had a better seat than you at Saturday night’s Las Vegas Philharmonic concert.

I was on the chorus risers, back row, eighth from the end, stage left.

While you got to see Maestro David Itkin alternately exhorting those barely audible musical phrases, then furiously conducting the stormy passages of Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 2 in C Minor, “Resurrection,” I was able to observe every expression on the man’s face as he led the symphony and a 240-voice chorus through the Phil’s debut at Reynolds Hall at the Smith Center for the Performing Arts.

Most of the time, he was deep in concentration but had looks of satisfaction as both groups and soloists Marie Plette and Eugenie Grunewald took the packed house through the five-movement, 90-minute piece.

From the moment I learned the Phil would first take the new venue’s stage in March, I knew I would be there.

When I discovered that the Las Vegas Master Singers, a choir my wife has been associated with, had been selected to perform with the Phil, I found I’d have a chance to be a part of history.

I know my limitations. I sing well enough to make an auditioned chorus but not well enough to make a career of it. It’s my good fortune to be able to sing first tenor, a part frequently in demand, and I’ve used that to enrich my personal life experiences.

I was able to parlay a trip to Mexico as a member of Northern Arizona University’s Shrine of Ages Choir and was lucky enough to coat-tail on my wife’s musical career to sing in a back-up group that performed at Barbra Streisand’s Millennium Concert at the MGM Grand Garden Arena on Dec. 31, 1999, and Jan. 1, 2000.

But this gig was going to be really special, performing in the newest and one of the most spectacular concert halls in the West.

When I heard we were going to perform “Resurrection,” my first response was like everyone else’s — why?

There were so many other musical choices that could have been made, so many more familiar, uplifting pieces. But then again, it was hard to beat performing two weeks before Easter with a text that translates to, “With wings I have won for myself, I shall soar in fervent love aloft to the light no eye has yet beheld! I shall die to live again!”

It was the right call.

Besides, the Mahler enabled the orchestra and the chorus to stretch the bounds of the hall’s acoustics. The piece is a fine blend of chaos and the sublime.

Was I thrilled about singing in German? Nein! It’s difficult to cozy up to a language in which the precision of diction is measured by the amount of spittle you leave on the collar of the singer in front of you. (Being in the back row, I was OK with this.)

I’m sure hundreds of the 2,050 in attendance were wondering what those well-dressed people on stage were doing for the first four movements and half of the fifth before we made our entrance.

The chorus comes in at pianissimo possibile, or as quietly as you can make a sound while still singing. Try vocalizing “Happy Birthday” that way in the shower and you’ll see how challenging it is. Be sure not to go flat when you hit the high notes.

The objective was to dazzle the crowd with a sound they had never experienced. Imagine 240 voices on stage at one time with a full orchestra. We probably couldn’t have done that at any other performance venue in Southern Nevada, but the stage at the Smith Center is large enough to accommodate it.

Leading up to the concert, the musical leadership — Itkin; Jocelyn Jensen, who directs the Master Singers; Douglas Peterson, director of the Southern Nevada Musical Arts Society; and David Weiller, director of the UNLV Concert Singers and Chamber Chorale — were worried that even at our quietest, we’d be too loud. In fact, the choir was told to memorize the first page of music so that there wouldn’t be 240 people turning pages at the same time.

At last Tuesday’s rehearsal, the first time that all three choirs had been brought together, Itkin said when we were done, “OK, now sing it half as loud with twice the intensity.”

Of course, the fabulous acoustics of Reynolds Hall cuts both ways. Not only could you hear the clarinetist dropping his cleaning swab on the floor, but we could hear every sound in the audience. So to the guy in the fifth row on the left in the mezzanine and the woman in the second row of the balcony near the center, see a doctor about that cough.

The late George Plimpton — a Harvard Lampoon writer and author who won fame in the 1970s by sharing his every-man experiences taking pitches against Major League Baseball pitchers, boxing Archie Moore and playing quarterback for the Detroit Lions — said his most terrifying experience was playing a triangle in a Boston Pops concert.

His reasoning was that if he made a mistake in sports, it would just go down as a bad play. But if you err in a concert, it’s like desecrating a piece of art. None of us wanted to be that person.

The mixed choir had its first rehearsal with the orchestra on Thursday, and Itkin took the chorus and the instrumentalists through the rough edges on Friday. Until Saturday, we never made it through the entire symphony without stopping.

Was it perfect? Probably not. Was it moving? No doubt. And we didn’t desecrate any art.

The audience warmly received us with a standing ovation and a call-back. Your applause is the only compensation the vocalists receive, aside from the satisfaction of performing a magnificent work. I think I can speak for my 239 choral colleagues when I say we appreciated your kind applause.

I’ll never forget the life experience so appropriately described on the front cover of the concert program for the Smith Center’s inaugural season.

“I was there.”