Whenever you hear or read about “Midwest tornadoes”, chances are they are talking about my neck of the woods. This past Monday a freakish line of storms passed right through Springfield and if you have never heard a tornado siren sound, trust me, when you are out when it does and your family is not with you, having to cancel a rehearsal is the furthest thing from your mind….
The damage although isolated was severe, and the deaths (only a few miles from here) tragic. The fear of not knowing where the funnels were going to touch down is scary to say the least. My family got together finally and we headed to the basement, it was around 6:15pm, we were there the rest of the night.
It took the city by surprise, give us a break tornadoes in January! (Last year at this time it was a devastating ice storm that hit us and we had to cancel a concert) Many of the musicians were either heading to rehearsal or getting ready to. We have a phone tree system for the principals to call their sections in case of emergency, but as many of them were taken by surprise also and were out of their houses, they didn’t have their lists with them. When we found out that we were in for a wave of very dangerous storms and not just the one it was at 6:45pm when we decided to cancel our 7:30pm rehearsal. Not a lot of time to act!
Our personal manager Tiffanie (also our asst Principal Bass and a now our hero) was in her basement with three phones and her computer (with one of her children clinging to her) frantically calling and emailing musicians. I was on the phone and I caught some people who had already arrived at rehearsal and they helped to spread the word. There were musicians driving in from out of town we couldn’t get a hold of (thankfully they found out when they arrived at rehearsal). Added to all of this cell phone service was starting to get spotty. Our biggest concern were for the people who were out of their homes and not near safe shelter of any kind. It was not until Tuesday that we found out everyone was OK.
All of the wrangling we do in our business seems so trivial when you are wondering if the people you care about are safe. We lost a rehearsal for this weekend’s concert (and the program includes The Planets), but that was the furthest thing from our minds. We all arrived at the rehearsal last night with a smile on our face, happy that we all got through it and happy to be back together to play great music. We have added some overtime to the rehearsals, and even though it wont add up to replacing the lost one, I trust them, and the way they tore into it last night further bolstered my trust in them. Appropriately, we started the rehearsal with Venus – Bringer of Peace. I believe it is going to be a “stellar” concert!