Singer Took Information Highway to Carnegie Hall

The Carnegie Hall stage has hosted operatic divas, orchestras from around the world and virtuosos on nearly every instrument.

Now add to the artist list: Canary3737 and her fellow singers AlysonB100, SantaMike and SwtMelis99.

When she is not online, Canary3737 is Sharon Radashaw, a music and drama teacher from Thousand Oaks who participated recently in an unusual performance of Handel’s “Messiah.”

For several months, Radashaw and about 90 other singers “rehearsed” for Carnegie Hall over their computers. As members of America Online’s CultureFinder Chorus, they did not meet until just days before their Nov. 29 appearance in New York City.

The final moment, when Radashaw and the rest of the AOL singers took the stage, was “absolutely thrilling,” she said. Carnegie’s 2,800 seats were nearly full.

“To get the applause when you’re standing there is just a wonderful feeling,” Radashaw said.

When a call for singers went out in February on America Online and CultureFinder, an Internet events calendar and ticketing service, about 150 people submitted audition tapes, CultureFinder President Eugene Carr said. In April, Radashaw was one of 20 AOL users selected from California.

Participants paid $1,200 to $1,500, plus air fare, for a trip to New York that Carr called a “fantasy baseball camp for musicians.”

“When we came up with the idea,” Carr said, “I thought that chat rooms and the Internet were getting a bad rap.” What Carr saw through his site was that the online world was not dominated by lurid content.

“I knew that every night we were getting fantastically interesting, arts-interested people to come to our chat rooms,” he said.

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Radashaw’s Carnegie debut was her sixth singing of “Messiah,” Handel’s three-part choral masterpiece known for its “Hallelujah!” chorus. With a bachelor’s degree in music education and a master’s in music, Radashaw sang throughout college in Michigan and has performed publicly closer to home, including the Hollywood Bowl.

A former Thousand Oaks arts commissioner, Radashaw teaches music and drama at Lawrence Middle School in Chatsworth. Her AOL log-on, Canary3737, was created long before the Internet.

“Years and years ago that was my handle on the CB radio,” she said.

It was by that I.D. that Radashaw was known throughout the months that the online choral group “rehearsed”--one night a week in a chat room, meeting each other and asking questions about the music. Message boards were for finding roommates and sharing other information.

The singers marked up their scores at home and could get cassettes to rehearse their specific parts. The conductor, British composer John Rutter, answered questions during one online session.

But all the performers had to learn their own music on their own, Radashaw said.

Thanksgiving Day brought the first meeting and real rehearsal for the group. After months of anonymous, soundless online correspondence, the singers finally met.

“It was kind of fun because we knew the people by their e-mail addresses and we didn’t always know their real names,” Radashaw said.

The first rehearsal showed that with all its communication power, there are still some tasks the Internet can’t handle. With long runs of quick 16th notes, the “Messiah” is complicated music for any ensemble, and even more so for singers who didn’t meet until three days before show time.

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“They sounded fine and everybody knew their parts pretty much,” Radashaw said, “but at that time it wasn’t really fitting and gelling as an ensemble because they’d never been together before.”

The group continued to practice throughout the weekend, right up to its Sunday afternoon performance.

“We had long, intense rehearsals,” she said.

For portions of the two-hour “Messiah” concert, the AOL chorus shared the Carnegie stage with the Bethel College Choral Union from Indiana. The New England Symphonic Ensemble accompanied the singers.

Radashaw’s family wasn’t able to join her in New York, but several acquaintances from a 1997 trip to Romania and Bulgaria were.

“I was glad to have friends,” she said.

Although the spotlight has dimmed, Radashaw still goes online to chat with her fellow singers. Her computer and the Internet have been ways of keeping in touch with friends and family across the United States and Europe, booking a vacation to Hong Kong and finding information for her students.

“Technology is wonderful,” she said, “and the opportunities are just starting and opening up.”