A Sweet Surprise

Today is the last day of Interlochen. Just like last year, I am so incredibly sad. I love it here. I love the area, I love the kids, and I love the music. All year I look forward to coming here, and when I'm here, I appreciate every moment. (Hopefully, someday John and I will own a house here and can visit whenever we want, camp or no!)

The last day of camp is a great one because the best concerts occur. Because Mark is in high school, and he because he's always in the top orchestras, his last Sunday at camp is packed. This morning, we all woke up to get to church by 9. At 10:00, he sang with the World Youth Honors Choir (WYHC) at the Interlochen assembly, a non-denominational gathering, filled with spoken word and what else? music. At 11:00, we were all together for the awards ceremony (Mark won Honor Camper for the second year in a row). 12:00 was lunch, and at 1:00, he was back to sing in a choral concert with the best high school singers on campus.

If you've never been to Interlochen, you must understand that this camp is steeped in tradition. One of the traditions is that at the end of every concert, the Interlochen theme is played (with no applause afterwards). The theme is actually an excerpt from Howard Hanson's Symphony No. 2. Many years ago, when the Interlochen orchestra was featured on a radio program, and Mr. Hanson was actually conducting the orchestra, playing his symphony, there was extra time at the end of the program. The announcer told him to fill one minute more, and he picked this specific excerpt. Naturally, there was no applause at the end--the radio just faded out. So, the tradition began.

Another tradition? The concertmaster of any orchestra is the one (and only) person that conducts the theme, the concertmaster being the first chair, first violin. Some of the kids are pretty good while some have obviously spent many more hours practicing their instrument than practicing conducting :-) Seeing as it's only the concertmaster who gets this honor, the odds of being the one to do it is pretty slim. First, you must play violin. Second, you must be the best which is not an easy thing at Interlochen.

For the WYHC, however, it is a different matter because there is no concertmaster, only singers. Most of the singers are voice majors, but because the choir always needs more males, Mark has made it in every year. In all honesty, he wants to sing with the choir because of the conductor, Dr. David Fryling, whom he greatly respects. There have been three different concerts this summer from WYHC, and three different auditions for the conductor. Mark has auditioned every time (and I think he may have auditioned last year too). Dr. Fryling, appropriately, has picked voice majors as the conductors every time. Afterall, Mark (or any orchestra person) wouldn't want a singer coming in and conducting the orchestra, just as it isn't quite kosher for anybody but a voice major to conduct the choir.

Well, Dr. Fryling loves Mark for many reasons, and knows him because Mark picks choir as his one and only elective every year. Today, the choir sounded outstanding. Just more beautiful than words can describe. In fact, they were cheered on to do an encore, something I've never seen done at Interlochen.

After the final applause, the audience died down, waiting for the theme. I wondered who had won the audition this time. Low and behold, to my astonishment, Mark steps down from the choir and takes his place in the front, facing the choir. The sweet boy, my angel boy, before he had completely circled around the piano and turned his back to the audience, actually looked out at me in the audience and smiled. I couldn't believe it.

I grabbed my phone and started videotaping, but I could hardly concentrate on it. I was laughing and crying, all at the same time, just so happy for Mark. For once, he was chosen at Interlochen, something that is very hard to do with such a stiff group of competition. He did a beautiful job conducting, and by the end, I couldn't even see anything because I was crying so hard. There were over 1,000 people in the audience, and I'm sure everyone was wondering which piece of music had obviously affected me so :-)

I headed over to Mark afterwards, and despite the fact that he had to head out to his line-up for his orchestra performance, he found me in the crowd and gave me a big hug. He was so happy that I was so happy and that he could surprise me.

Afterwards, I found Dr. Fryling and without even introducing myself, but looking at my face, he knew I was Mark's mom. He told me what an exceptional person he thinks Mark is, and how glad he was to let Mark have the opportunity to conduct the premier choir on the last day of camp at Interlochen. I was so proud.

Here's the video. It's terrible, because I didn't know it was happening and wasn't ready. You can't really see Mark, but believe me, he's the one conducting, and you can't see all the people that were actually there, but they were. I'm obviously a big, soggy mess by the end--it was just such a beautiful moment.