Thursday, August 30, 2007

Last night was the farewell send-off dinner for the CELEBRITY "SUMMIT" cast. We had dinner at Blackstone Brewery - it was really great! This cast has all the makings of a very successful performance experience these next 6 months. Our best wishes for smooth sailing go to the cast of the SUMMIT!

Wednesday, August 29, 2007

The cast of CELEBRITY CRUISES' "SUMMIT" has been performing final runs of its shows in preparation for heading to the ship on Friday. These pics were taken at yesterday's rehearsals. Their farewell dinner is tonight, and then its a full day tomorrow of packing and preparation for 6 months on the ship. Erin and Caren will be going out with this cast to do the remount in Alaska.

Take a look at this last photo - this is Marco, one of the great male dancers in the cast, doing a tumbling pass during one of the numbers. This photo gets the "believe it or not" award for this cast! How does he do that?

Wednesday, August 29, 2007

The cast of the GEM has arrived safely in Germany! Well, most of the cast. A couple of the performers got stuck in route and will not be there until tomorrow. I talked to David Patton this afternoon and he said the ship is really beautiful. Apparently the sets are installed and things have gone very smoothly with the scenic installation and storage. We wish David, Mindy, Bruce, Curt, Eric, Blair and the entire GEM production team and cast all the best for a successful installation! If all goes well, they should be able to run the first show on Thursday for the lighting director to document and light.

Here are the cast photos we took at the send-off dinner on Monday night. Thanks to the cast for allowing Bruce, Garris, Mindy and me to be in this first shot!

Monday, August 27, 2007

Last night we had the farewell dinner for the GEM cast. It was really nice to see them all one last time before they leave for Germany tomorrow. Bruce Stegmann, Mindy and Doug McLemore, Garris Wimmer and several friends of the cast members joined us. Congratulations to the cast for finishing phase one of rehearsals! There is still a lot of work to do, but they are well on their way to having three great shows! I will try to upload some pics for tomorrow's posting. Bon voyage to the GEM cast!

Sunday, August 26, 2007

I spent some time organizing photos this morning and realized there were some more shots of this week's rehearsals that deserved posting. These images really show what great performers we have working with us right now...and all of our cast members are even better in person! Congratulations to Mindy, Garris, Bruce, Steve, David, Brandon, Terry, Erin, Claire, and the entire GMC team for casting and training such terrific performers. Hope you enjoy!

Saturday, August 25, 2007

Cast of the "INFINITY"

The last two days have been busy with rehearsals for the GEM, SUMMIT, and INFINITY. The NCL entertainment management team was in Nashville today to watch GEM rehearsals in preparation for their departure to the ship on Tuesday. The cast did portions of all three of their shows. It was great to see how the cast had progressed in just the last few days! They are going to be an awesome team on stage! Tomorrow night is the cast farewell dinner for the GEM performers.

Here are some up close and personal shots of cast members from all three ships.

Tuesday, August 21, 2007

Here are some more pics from ship rehearsals this past weekend. The GEM cast is heading into the final few days of rehearsal before leaving for Europe to join the ship. The NCL entertainment management team will be here this weekend to watch runs of all three new shows. We're looking forward to seeing all of the shows "in progress!"

Monday, August 20, 2007

Last night, I spent about 2 hours trying to enter new posts with pictures from all the things going on here at GMC this past weekend. My internet service kept crashing, so I am now trying again... here goes!

We currently have 3 casts rehearsing in Nashville...the GEM, the SUMMIT, and the INFINITY. Friday, we were treated to runs by the casts of the GEM and SUMMIT. They are awesome performers! We were very pleased with where both casts are at this point. Skip Stewart arrived Friday evening with the new costumes to be fitted for the GEM cast. There were literally hundreds of costume pieces to fit, but everyone involved was patient and cooperative. The costumes are going to be killer! Congrats to Skip on a job well done! Richard Ambrose, the new director of entertainment for NCL came in on Saturday to see the costumes and watch a portion of "Colorz", one of the new shows for the GEM. It was great to have him here. He had some valuable input for us, which we always welcome and appreciate!

These are rehearsal shots from this weekend. I will try to add more images over the next few days. Hope you enjoy the casts!
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The image at the top of the post and the next three images are of the GEM rehearsals...

The next few shots from from the SUMMIT rehearsals. The first shot is the entire SUMMIT cast. Brandon Thomas (asst. music director) is in the yellow shirt on the far right, and Erin Davis (asst. choreographer) is on the back row, second from left. Who is the gray-haired guy in the middle?

Thursday, August 16, 2007

HUBBARD GLACIER, ALASKA

This has been an amazing week! I just returned from Alaska where I was on the MV "MERCURY" with our new cast and the Mercury/GMC production team. Even the locals were talking about how fantastic the weather was for the entire week. Each day the temp was in the 70's, and NO RAIN...practically unheard of in Alaska! I arrived in Ketchikan last Wednesday and immediately boarded the ship to watch rehearsals. We then sailed to Vancouver where we spent Friday receiving new guests. Kelley Evans, Dale Rutherford and I spent the morning exploring downtown Vancouver, then lunch at a local Thai restaurant. Vancouver is a beautiful, vibrant city with great shopping (Kelley enjoyed that!) and a unique blend of historic and ultra modern architecture.

Here is a shot of a glacier river as it meets the waters of the "Bay of Disenchantment" at the Hubbard Glacier site.

Additional stops on the trip included Skagway, Juneau, and the Hubbard Glacier - probably the highlight of the trip. Our captain maneuvered the ship to within about 100 yards of the face of the glacier. The cracking of the massive river of ice sounded like a thunderstorm! Huge chunks of ice calved (technical term for "fell off") from the face of the ice as guests' cameras snapped to capture the phenomenon. I was lucky enough to catch a series of photos showing a large chunk of ice plunging into the water. Very cool!

One of the countless phenomenal sites you'll see on a trip to Alaska.

We were in port with the SUMMIT in Juneau. Here is a photo taken of the SUMMIT at dusk as it sailed out on its way to Skagway, Alaska.

It was warm enough on a couple of days for guests to swim in the Mercury's pool. A little too chilly for me!

Dale Rutherford and Kelley Evans on the streets of Vancouver. We had a great morning exploring the city!

The cast of the Mercury did a fantastic job of pulling together to stage three great opening nights. The guests on the ship were extremely demonstrative and enjoyed each of the shows. This was our first time to produce the shows on the Mercury, having taken over from FJM Productions, the long-time producers for the Mercury. The outgoing cast was incredibly gracious and helpful during the entire handover. Thanks to the FJM cast for making the transition so smooth! Leigh-Ann Thomasson was on board for several days representing Celebrity's home office in Miami. It was great to see her, too!

Here are several shots from the shows on the MERCURY...

I took a red-eye flight back to Nashville this morning and then spent the afternoon with the casts of the INFINITY, SUMMIT, and GEM. It was awesome to see so many talented performers working on learning and refining the many aspects of their respective shows. I am really pleased with what I saw today. Tomorrow, the casts of the GEM and SUMMIT will be performing complete run throughs of a couple of their shows. This weekend will be filled with more rehearsals and costume fittings for the GEM. A big "shout-out" to the entire GMC team for all the hard work and talent being poured into making these shows so successful - you guys are truly awesome!

I will take shots of the rehearsals tomorrow and post them this weekend. Hope everyone is having a great week! By the way, it was 107 in Nashville again today...and no relief in sight. WOW! What a complete switch from my week in Alaska!