Norma's official portrait for the Nashville Symphony Orchestra on a background of Mozart's Concerto for Flute and Orchestra in G Major, one of the 15 pieces she prepared for her orchestra audition in 1972.

POSH TOUR BUSES MAKE A BIG IMPRESSION

Husband Bruce Liked Music; Won Norma's Hand

There she was, our Norma, in closeups that filled the large video screen on either side of the stage, the sound of her piccolo projected to the Detroit stadium's capacity crowd by the latest in audio technology.

17 cities in four weeks

It was the 1997 Amy Grant Christmas tour with the Nashville Symphony Orchestra, where Norma Rogers plays third flute and piccolo. The concerts sold out in 13 of the 17 cities in the four-week tour, and Cousins Plus families in North Carolina and Michigan managed to attend. Star of the tour, Amy Grant, first known as a gospel singer, is now considered a country crossover artist, said Norma, who enjoys her mellow voice.

"I'd always hoped to see Norma in her natural habitat, so it was great she came to us," said Jan BenDor. She found herself "rubbernecking around a pole to see Norma" in Detroit's Palace of Auburn Hills.  That's where the Red Wings play hockey and the Pistons play basketball to crowds of 21,400. Concertgoers, however, are limited to 14,600 seats because the stage takes up one end of the stadium.

Spectacular staging

The tour program, mostly Christmas music, included several orchestral compositions, among which were excerpts from Stravinsky's Firebird Suite, with passages featuring the piccolo. That was when Norma's image filled the huge video projection screens on either side of the stage. The passages on her always audible piccolo were enhanced to perfection, thanks to the latest in audio technology. Michael-David was impressed with the show's spectacular staging, computer-controlled lighting effects, and "well-done" sound system, all "state of the art stuff," he said.

Right: "That church has good acoustics; a lot of churches do," said Norma, always mindful of her sound environment.  While pregnant with Alex in 1974, Norma rehearsed Mozart's concerto for flute and harp with the Nashville Baroque and Classical Society in this old Episcopalian church in downtown Nashville.

Tour was large

While the tour included only 43 members of the 75-musician symphony orchestra, it was perhaps "one of the largest tours ever mounted," Jan opined.  Traveling with the musicians on the tour was a full complement of sound engineers, cameramen and stage set-up people, Norma said.

Like a yacht

The 10 buses that carried the tour were another highlight of the concert for proud family attendees. "The bus is a well laid out system for traveling, with bathroom, kitchenette and a den to watch videos," Michael-David said. "It's nicely appointed with lots of comforts, like the inside of a yacht," said Jan.

Seeing and hearing Norma at the tour's concert in Charlotte, North Carolina, had a major effect on Norma's cousin, Samantha Poer, who traveled with her mother, Robin, and father, Gordon, from their home in Carrboro, North Carolina. The combination of the concert and the tour of the bus made an impression on 12-year-old Samantha. "This is awesome," she told her mother; then she promised herself she would practice her trombone more. "Norma is a great role model for Samantha," said Robin. "It's wonderful to have that in our family."

Norma tootled her piccolo in a pied piper outfit at an "Action Auction" held in 1985 to benefit Public Radio.

Bruce Rogers Likes Music;
Woos and Wins Norma

When Bruce met Norma at Indiana University, the first thing he learned about her was that she was in the music department. He then commented on how nice it was to be somewhere with such a long opera season. That was a crucial moment. "It revealed he liked music," Norma said, remembering the encounter at Hillel's autumn open house.

Right:  Norma and Bruce celebrated their union in the summer of 1968 with two weddings, the first, by a justice of the peace in Indiana. They were in Summer School at Indiana and would arrive in Philadelphia for their wedding just two days before the big event. That did not enable them to comply with the then required  blood tests in Pennsylvania, so the second wedding was a religious ceremony only.  The whole family attended, including this writer. 

Nobody but the newlyweds noticed that the rabbi performing their ceremony did not say, "by the authority vested in me by the State of Pennsylvania."

At Indiana, where opera is an area of concentration within the voice department, there is a performance every week throughout the year, and in the summer, too, Norma said. Bruce had taken her telephone number, but then he had misplaced it. When he found it a couple of months later, he gave her a call, and they started dating.

The right thing

"She smiled when I mentioned the long opera season, so I knew I'd said the right thing," Bruce said.