On the day of our first concert of tour, January 2nd, we had a free morning to do as we wished. Some gleeks decided to go hiking up elephant mountain, others took a visit to the Taipei City Mall, and still others took a trip up to the top of the famous Taipei 101 building with some of the fastest elevators in the world.
We met after lunch to take the buses to the Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial. We took group photos both inside and outside the beautiful National Concert Hall Conveniently we all coordinated and wore our great tour shirts (designed by the talented Dennis Zhang). Here is the full group on the steps of the Taipei National Concert Hall:
The Concert Hall had an incredible pipe organ taking up the wall behind the stage, and the room had wonderful acoustics: one of the best in the country, we were told. Here we are on the stage:
At long last we had a sound check to prepare for our concert in the concert hall. We ran through the critical parts of the repertoire and made sure we had everything under our belt.
After the sound check, we had a dinner consisting of a box with sushi rolls. The people in charge of our dinner learned only after they ordered that we were headed to Japan next! We changed into our clothes and prepared to perform in the concert hall at 7pm.
Overall, it was a fantastic concert. Since it was both the first concert on tour and a high profile concert hall, we were all a little nervous, but the adrenaline gave energy to our music. However we were a bit put off by the icy cold silence after our first piece; unbeknownst to us, an announcer had before our arrival on stage asked the audience to keep their applause until the end of a section! But as the concert unravelled, it was clearly a success. Lite’s A Cappella was beautiful; and probably the single moment that garnered the most applause was Jasper Johnson’s translations of announcements into Chinese. It was a great concert to start off the tour.
We were all very excited in the backstage to have performed our first concert: I for one was most nervous about this concert in particular, and we had risen to expectations. It was then time to say goodbye to the concert hall.
That night after the concert, we were taken to a karaoke event at Party World, where we were treated by Albert Ting himself to two large reserved rooms, as well as food and drinks throughout the night. The gleeks enjoyed themselves in the singing and drinking, a joyous end to a strong first concert day.
Author: Sean Park and Jeffery Durand