A short time ago, @mrsbozz happened to see an advertisement for an act that was coming to our local theater and performance hall. She let me know she was interested in attending, and a quick couple of minutes later, I had two tickets to see the Detroit Youth Choir. I actually didn't get to see the commercial that she saw, but I was sure it would be a good show no matter what.
The Midland Center for the Arts does a pretty good job of bringing in some really great talent despite being located in a relatively small town in the middle of Michigan. Their commitment to the arts is obvious and that is part of the reason I donate to them on occasion to keep that mission alive.
I've been coming to the Center for the Arts ever since I was a kid. There was a time (and it might still be the case), that the Center for the Arts housed the only escalator in the city of Midland. Pretty odd that I would know that right? I guess that's the sort of thing you hold onto when you are young and you grow up in a small town.
Apparently, when @mrsbozz saw the advertisement for the show, the tickets had already been on sale for a while because I wasn't able to get us quite as close as I would normally like. Depending on the act, I have paid close to $80 a seat for shows in this venue, but luckily the price of these tickets were only about $22 a piece.
As you can see from the photos, despite being further back than usual, there still really isn't a bad view in the place. In addition to that, the large theater is relatively old, so the seats are larger than you might find in most venues. I chalk that up to the fact that this place was built back when the experience was the most important thing. Even more than how many butts they could fit in seats.
I didn't know this at the time, but apparently back in 2019, the Detroit Youth Choir were on the competition show "America's Got Talent". It wasn't until I mentioned to someone that I was going to this show that they said, "hey, aren't those the kids that were on AGT?".
The truth is, yes and no. Due to the crazy natural fact that kids grow up, I have a feeling there are few if any of the original members still in the group that we saw. In fact, the director made a comment about this being their "Center State Choir" which makes me wonder if they have more than one group of kids.
I have heard that after their success on the competition show, they started their own short reality series on Disney Plus that consists of 6 episodes. My wife and I plan on watching it but right now we are too wrapped up in the NCAA basketball tournaments and we just started watching "The Gentlemen" on Netflix.
We will get to it eventually though, I promise.
The show itself was only about an hour and a half long with a twenty minute intermission in the middle. Usually you don't see intermissions in shows this short, but given the fact that these are all young performers, it really didn't bug me that much. Plus, the show was a matinee that started at around 3:00 PM, so it wasn't like we had to rush home to get to bed!
Generally in this venue they discourage the taking of photos or recording of the performances. That didn't seem to be the case with this group as there were people all over taking photos and videos. I still like enjoying the show and being a little respectful, so this was the only shot I took while the choir was performing.
Looking back at the video above, this group of kids appears to be quite a bit younger than the group that performed in 2019. Perhaps the docuseries covers that. I will have to wait and see.
Unfortunately, there was one negative to the performance and that would be the guy sitting behind us. I realize you can't control the people who sit around you at things like this, but trust me, this guy was a real piece of work.
He did nothing but complain the whole performance. If it wasn't one thing it was another. "This sounds horrible". "These are supposed to be professionals, it should be better than this". "It's like they don't know how to level the mics, how can they charge for this". "Are they even trying?"
I could go on, but I won't. If I had been in a more confrontational mood, perhaps I would have said something like this to him:
"They're kids, they are learning, they have nerves and off days, maybe take that into account. Plus, I am sure the people running the sound are probably kids as well who are part of the choir and learning how to do this just like the rest of them."
Finally, I maybe would have pointed out to him that his seats are one row behind ours, so they likely only paid $22 like we did. If you think $22 merits a Carnegie Hall performance then clearly you have a lot more issues than you already appear to.
Honestly, @mrsbozz probably would have confronted him before I did.
Despite the jack wagon behind us, we still enjoyed the show. Yes, there were some technical glitches and parts that were a bit harder to hear or understand than others, but I don't feel that detracted from the performance at all.
It was a delightful afternoon and I am looking forward to learning more about this organization and these kids via the Disney Plus series.
If you get a chance, you should check it out yourself!
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