Adventures on America’s Got Talent – A Recap

JustinGeneral, Music1 Comment

In case you missed it, here’s my 3 Penny Chorus and Orchestra on America’s Got Talent recap — the story of our New Haven-based chorus and orchestra’s wild ride on national reality TV the last four months. To all my friends and fellow musicians, the crew at AGT and everyone who followed and supported us, thank you for being wonderful.

We auditioned for AGT in June at the Hammerstein Ballroom playing “Call Me Maybe” by Carly Rae Jepsen, a tune that the brilliant and creative Colin Britt and Arianne Abela had arranged and conducted last year that got 2.5 million views on youtube.

With a standing ovation from Howard Stern and wild cheers from the crowd, we advanced to the Vegas round where they brought a subset of the group out on stage to tell us we were being advanced without a second performance on to the Radio City Music Hall Quarterfinals — that was this week.

This last Tuesday, we played “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together” by Taylor Swift LIVE from Radio City for 9 million viewers, including my parents, older brother and 6,000 others in the hall. They even decked us out in LEDs and made our instruments look like light sabers. Crazy, right?

Then on Wednesday we were back on for the results show (here’s the full show) where this four-month crazy adventure came to an end — not a big surprise, and a bit of a relief for some of us.

We all came together to play fun music with good people, and for me, it was always helpful for me to remember that AGT is a reality show that crafts its product for the highest degree of intrigue and sensation. 3 Penny is a group of friends and colleagues that plays this music for the joy of it, and while we all had a blast doing this, it wasn’t going to be the same “big break” for us that it might be for others on the show.

I’m grateful we made it this far and got this ridiculous opportunity to play our music for the world, and I’m glad to see Timber, Taylor Williamson, Cami Bradley and Jimmy Rose are moving on to the next round. They’re all kind and talented folks and deserve every bit of the attention and excitement that’s ahead.

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