First post (Holiday Cheer)!!

Welcome to my blog - Larry Loh here, Music Director of the fantastic Northeastern Pennsylvania Philharmonic!   Let's get to know each other here!  I welcome your feedback and suggestions and hope you enjoy my stories and thoughts.

We are in the middle of my 4th official season as Music Director.  So let's take a trip down memory lane to my first meeting with the Philharmonic!  This is a good story, I think, with a sort of horror element amidst the holiday cheer. . . .

Some of you may know this, but my first meeting with the Philharmonic was conducting an audition Holiday concert in 2004.  Glenn Roberts, the Executive Director at the time, told me that this would be a great test of my organizational abilities, since there would be two ballet companies, an adult choir, a children's choir, plus the Philharmonic.  There would be two performances in two different venues, but we'd only have one 2 1/2 hour rehearsal to put it all together.  Glenn and I started planning the concert early in the summer, months before the concert was to take place.  After exhaustive and numerous drafts, we finalized a program we thought would work.  

After months of preparation, it finally came time for my first and monumental trip to NEPA.  I was living in Dallas, TX at the time, and took a direct flight to Philadelphia, rented a car (for some reason, I did it this way) and drove the final two hours to Scranton/Wilkes-Barre.  I didn't bring my family, stayed at Genetti's in Wilkes-Barre, ate very little and constantly looked over my scores.

We had several events/rehearsals before the single Philharmonic rehearsal.  There was a choral rehearsal with the excellent Choral Society of Northeastern PA, a guest group rehearsal the night before meeting the orchestra to go over choreography and logistics (when the chorus entered, etc). Once these things were in place, we were finally ready to put it together with the Philharmonic.

After this much anticipation, you want things to go smoothly.  You want to make a good first impression with the orchestra and come across as an organized "with it" leader-type.  We were at the Scranton Cultural Center and I was readying myself in my basement dressing room. Rehearsal was to start at 1 pm and it was around 12:45 - - with 15 minutes to go before meeting the illustrious members of the Philharmonic, I thought I'd use the facilities and head upstairs to the stage. 

I closed the door behind me and there was a definite "CLICK" - - the doorknob made a weird sound, but I didn't really think anything of it.  When I went to re-open it, it turned, but there was no moving parts except the knob itself.  The DOOR WOULDN'T OPEN!!  I was two doors in from the hallway (the door to the dressing room, then the door to the bathroom).  I thought, "keep it together, no need to panic, I still have 10 minutes."  I started knocking on the door, at first with a gentlemanly knock, then increasingly louder as the minutes ticked by.  I had about five minutes to go when I swallowed my pride and started yelling, "Hello???!?!?  Can anyone hear me???  I'm locked in the bathroom!!!"  I heard some young voices calling towards me, and I asked them to get someone to open this door.  I heard their little feet run away never to return.  

I sunk to the floor and resigned myself to my fate - - locked in the dressing room bathroom on the eve of my first rehearsal (and audition) with the Northeastern Pennsylvania Philharmonic.  I could actually hear the orchestra tuning upstairs, and heard what probably was, "Please welcome our conductor candidate Lawrence Loh" and then an awkward pause.  A minute later, I heard "Larry, Larry??" -- my hero Glenn Roberts finally made his way downstairs and freed me from my prison.

First impressions are so important, aren't they?  Well, I went in front of the orchestra and said,  "Hello everyone!  I'm so sorry I'm late - - you don't want to know where I was."  They laughed at my lame excuse and that relieved the tension that I felt.  Wow, what a great group of people, I thought.

So on the 4th anniversary of that first concert, we are here at another family-oriented Holiday Concert "T'was the Night Before Christmas," coming up December 5 at the Scranton Cultural Center and December 6 at the Kirby Center!   It will have many of the same guests as from that first concert, with some new music and some old favorites.  In addition to the Choral Society, Kantorei Chorus, Ballet Northeast, and Ballet Theater of Scranton, we have narrator Cody Brooks, guest conductor Cindy Gowell, and dear friend and guest soprano Laura Anne Ayres - all of whom will be spreading Christmas cheer with the Northeastern Pennsylvania Philharmonic.  

We know you're going to recognize many of the Christmas tunes at this concert, and you'll love the new ones as well.  There are even a few pieces that we are bringing back from that exact audition concert in a retrospective "Christmas Past" way.  

We hope you come to warm up to the holiday season!