When you’ve got a bad case of pandemic fatigue, where can you escape?
Why, the Monterey Bay Aquarium, of course – at least in your mind, while it’s enduring an unprecedented year-long closure.
The Aquarium began sharing that message of solace and joy with its vast audiences
on March 12 in a video set to the song “My Favorite Things” and performed by 16 Hartnell
College vocal music students.
“When the Zoom fails, when you’re muted, when the WiFi’s bad, we simply remember Aquarium things,” say the parody’s lyrics, “and then we don’t feel so sad.”
The 3.5-minute video went out to 100,000 email subscribers and 153,000 YouTube followers, plus thousands more Aquarium friends via other social media channels.
“We can’t wait to see our guests again soon,” the Aquarium tells its many fans.
Its staff conjured the idea of adapting the beloved “Sound of Music” tune and invited Hartnell vocal music instructor Sandra Rudo and her singers to join in making it happen.
“They were just thrilled to be asked to do this,” said Rudo, who directs the Hartnell Choir and Chamber Singers. Brandon Ellsworth, choir director at North Salinas High School, helped with the production.
The volunteer Hartnell singers recorded their vocals in early January while on Winter Break, and the Aquarium team meshed the audio with video snippets of sea life and masked employees, reminding viewers of the wonders that await them when the Aquarium reopens.
The singers appear in a Zoom-style window at the end of the video, with the on-screen acknowledgment, “Special thanks to the Hartnell College Choir! You’re otterly pawesome!”
Rudo said the complicated lyrics, such as “hand-feeding sharks with a neoprene mitten”
and “octopus poop that looks like one long noodle,” were a challenge to enunciate.
“I would hear the kids stumbling over ‘mola,’ and I said, ‘You’ve got to sing those words, and you’ve got to get that emphasis right so the words can be understood,” she recalled.
Following a two-hour group rehearsal on Zoom, the singers polished and recorded their own parts, with many using high-fidelity microphones provided by the Hartnell College Foundation and its Council of Arts. Rudo and Ellsworth combined the audio with musical accompaniment via computer and sent the finished recording to the Aquarium.
As the video opens with a few Aquarium employees musing over the woes of pandemic
life, Aquarium Executive Director Julie Packard sets up the song by observing, “When
anything bothers me and I’m feeling unhappy, I just try to think of Aquarium things
… Mola molas, kelp forests, jellies and sea stars.”
And from there the video spirals into the Rodgers and Hammerstein melody and the magic of nature that persists within the world famous Aquarium on Monterey’s Cannery Row.
Rudo said her students were “just smiling” as they watched the video together on Zoom before its release.
“I should have taken a photo of them watching themselves so I could show them the film,” she said.