East Coast Tour Day 8

We left Fredericksburg and got to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center with time to spare.  The first thing we saw was a deer peacefully walking the grounds.  The deer was seen again trying to visit patients.  We successfully made it through security and met the Lt Commander in charge of Child Psychology and base entertainment visits.  He made sure we knew what a healing effect music has on patients.  It helps them forget the bad times and remember the good.  The boys sang 10 or so songs.  “Tell My Father” was a particularly beautiful and poignant one and almost impossible to not hold back tears.  There was some excitement as well when we were told to evacuate due to a fire threat and we saw how quickly and professionally the fire crew jumps into action.  Ultimately there was no fire and the first responders packed up as quickly as they came.  We drove to the U.S. Capital building.  The dome is going through the first major restoration of the exterior in over 100 years.  They are removing oxidation and attempting to finish it by the time the 2016 elections get into full swing.  We met our tour guides there and drove around Washington.  We drove along the Mall, stopped at the Lincoln Memorial then Arlington National Cemetery.  There was a lot of traffic due to rush hour so we didn’t get the time we’d hoped to, but we did see the changing of the guard.  Those soldiers are precise in their marching and arms presentation.  You can see and sense the honor they feel being able to march back and forth in front of an unknown fallen comrade.  For Cantabile it was back to the hotel for pizza, cake and ice cream.  Allegro went on to the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. They watched a brief concert, played some Frisbee outside, and then went up to the terrace.  On top of the terrace they sang and watched as President Obama returned to the White House on Marine 1 after delivering his eulogy in Charlotte. Allegro can now say they have sung at Kennedy Center. It was Allegro Night Out so they went to the Shake Shack near Dupont Circle.  They gorged themselves on all you can eat food and dessert.  It was a short walk back to the hotel and a rest well deserved.  Tomorrow the White House, the Smithsonian Museums and more.  

East Coast Tour Day 7

The boys were up and ready to go even though it was an early start.  We drove for about 45 minutes and hopped on a trolley for a tour of historic Fredericksburg, VA.  We were shown where George Washington and his family lived when he was 6. Saw numerous homes and buildings of historic significance primarily because of their age, some having been built in the 1720’s.  This was more than a civil war history tour.  Fredericksburg is rich in pre-Revolutionary War history.  Fredericksburg is antique shop heaven and offers a variety of antiquities to choose from.  The boys were able to explore the shops for about 45 minutes in between lunch, battlefield tours and learning about Apothecary.  The Battle of Fredericksburg involved more soldiers than any battle in the Civil War.  There are 18,000 soldiers buried in the National Cemetery there, most with no name.  From a Union perspective this battle was a disaster.  We took a walking tour of the Sunken Road which meandered along a path behind a rock wall the Confederate soldiers laid behind as the Union soldiers tried numerous times, unsuccessfully, to take the high ground.  This was a living history experience that may take the boys awhile to absorb but one they will probably ever forget.  We learned about medical history through the Apothecary presentation where the boys had numerous questions about leaches, how water was filtered through soap stone to produce purity and other methods of healing and treatments.  They were asked the difference between leaches found in a lake and those used in Apothecary.  The answer was the Apothecary leaches are trained.  We left historic Fredericksburg and checked into the hotel with an hour to spare before busing off to the performance at Fredericksburg United Methodist Church.  They rehearsed and were served a Mexican dinner.  The performance in front of about 180 people live and many more through streaming video was great.  We mingled afterward over cookies, water and punch before heading back to the hotel for sleep.  It’s off to Washington DC in the morning where the boys will most certainly rock the nation’s capital. 

East Coast Tour Day 6

Mark and Mike went to the ABC affiliate WTVR with 20 plus Cantabile boys.  The rock stars showed Richmond what the Boychoir is all about on “Virginia This Morning”.   They looked great and sounded great.  They also saw how Richmond makes a 2.5 foot high hamburger.  It helps to have a guy like Mike around to grease the wheels in the TV world. They also recorded a holiday song to be used this coming holiday season in Richmond.  The rest of the choir went to the Museum of the Confederacy.  The museum sat next to the White House of the south and divided itself into three areas; how the Civil War effected civilians, artifacts from the period, and art.  There was a picture of Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson meeting on horseback just before the battle at Chancellorsville where Jackson was mortally wounded (see Day 2 blog for more details).  They had a mural of Lee’s headquarters tent with the actual items he used including boots, bed, silver eating utensils and plates.  The morning was cool and breezy, a welcome change from the last few days of hot sun and humidity.  So we walked to the State Capital, saw a beautiful sculpture of George Washington and then down to Brown’s Island where we had sandwiches and sat on the bank of the James River.  It was the mouth of the James River where the famous Battle of the Monitor and Merrimack took place.  Next we visited the American Civil War Museum.  It was part of a historical site that included the Tredegar Iron Works, the largest munitions, steel and fabricating factory in the south.  This museum’s focus is on presenting a balance between the Confederacy, Union and African American perspectives of what built up to, happened during and what the continuing results of the Civil War are.  One of the highlights was learning how to fire a muzzle loading cannon.  After a couple of “deaths” because of poor loading techniques the participants were able to simulate the firing in less than 30 seconds.  We went back to the hotel for some rest before going to the Cathedral of the Sacred Heart for the performance.  This was a spectacular church.  Historically we learned that it is the only church in the world where one person wrote one check and paid for the entire church.  The benefactor wanted it to be acoustically state of the art and it was.  After rehearsal we were treated to a dinner prepared by a chef and our waiters were from the Knights of Columbus.  They also gave us an ice cream social outside the church after the performance that was a wonderful surprise for the boys.  The concert was live streamed, something we will be doing more of as we perfect the process.  There was a very large audience for a Wednesday night.  The boys filled the huge space with their music and received the praise and congratulations we regularly see after performances.  Back to the hotel, a little swim, and snack then off to bed for a 6:15 wakeup call.