I had an interesting morning.

Let’s back up a second. A few weeks ago, two of my good friends from Yale, Colin Britt and Arianne Abela (who run this very awesome group) decided to have a little fun. Colin arranged Carly Rae Jepsen’s summer mega-pop hit ‘Call Me Maybe‘ for orchestra and choir and recorded a video to put on YouTube.

That’s when it starts to get interesting. The video went viral and to date has more than 1.5 million hits. It’s a really good video – both the arrangement and the performance are really classy, and let’s be honest, who wouldn’t want to hear that infectious song one more time? Here’s the video, if you haven’t checked it out yet:

Now, those of you that know me know that I really like this song. It’s really really good. Just listen to it once, and I promise it will never leave your head. That’s just how good it is. So, I was really sad to be unavailable when Arianne asked me to play percussion for this video.

Then, a few days ago, I get a random text from Arianne explaining that she had just gotten a call from the Today Show: they were going to play the song live on national TV, and would I like to join them? (p.s. I will have to show up around 6am)

Apparently, the video had gotten so much buzz that the producers of Today were willing to send two buses to New Haven at 3am to pick up 60 singers and instrumentalists along with a bunch of percussion gear and rent a harp for our usage in NYC.

So naturally, I said yes. A perfect opportunity to a) be on national TV and b) share my love for Carly Rae Jepsen with the world.

It was really really fun. I left my apartment a little after 5am (which is so early that the subway is still running on a late night schedule) and got to Rockefeller Center close to 6. It’s still pitch black. The first thing I noticed was a long line of people that were camped out in line to get tickets to Saturday Night Live. I guess this is what you have to do to see SNL….literally sleep on the sidewalk in midtown Manhattan for like two days.

I crossed the street and got to the plaza outside the Today Show. There were also people lining up already to stand outside and watch the show. We rehearsed a little bit, and they kind of told us what was going to happen. We were going to do one quick teaser of about 30 seconds of the piece live at 7 and then our big full performance + interview would be closer to 8:30. It was kind of awesome watching the production of the whole thing – it takes a lot of people and equipment to make the Today Show happen. Here we are getting ready:

Note, it’s still dark out. And yes, I’m playing glockenspiel.

So we hung out until a little after 8, and then came back up to the plaza to record a few more short spots to entice the audience to keep watching. Apparently, the folks ‘upstairs’ liked us so much that they wanted us to play and play and play. One of more of the anchors would come outside (to wild applause and screaming from the people waiting), talk for a few seconds into a camera, and then we would go. Here’s one of the anchors doing just that:

Maggie Gyllenhaal stopped by to give a 90 second interview:

Then our big moment came! The anchors came out and interviewed Arianne and Colin a bit about their concept and why they did this. Then we played through the whole piece….and the anchors joined in. Al Roker jumped in and sang with the choir, Savannah Guthrie ‘played’ trumpet and my friend Doug Perry even taught Willie Geist how to play the timpani:

And that was that, my debut on national TV and a really fun morning. Here’s the whole spot on the Today Show website in case you missed it. I was really banking on Carly Rae Jepsen emerging from the crowd and surprising us, but I guess that’ll just have to wait for another time.