SEQUIM –– How do you get to Carnegie Hall?

For the Sequim High School choir, it took a couple of years of selling Christmas trees, singing for fundraisers and, as the old show business joke goes, “practice.”

More than 40 members of the choir packed into a Sequim School District bus Wednesday night for the airport and five-day trip to sing in New York City’s hallowed concert hall.

“They’ve been working really hard for this, and now it’s time to go,” choir director John Lorentzen said Thursday. “They are ready.”

They are scheduled to sing on the stage that has hosted the likes of George Gershwin, Duke Ellington, the Beatles and Tina Turner at 8 p.m. Sunday.

“It’s a pretty good club we’re joining,” Lorentzen said.

The choir tuned up its set at the North Olympic Peninsula choral adjudication Tuesday, Lorentzen said. “And they’ve got it down.”

Sequim sends its choir to Carnegie every four years.

The total cost of the trip is $125,000, with much of that coming from the choir’s booster club.

The whirlwind trip also includes tourist stops at the Statue of Liberty, One World Trade Center, Rockefeller Plaza and Broadway shows “Wicked” and “Newsies.”

Lorentzen, his students and the parent chaperones are slated to return Monday night.

________

Sequim-Dungeness Valley Editor Joe Smillie can be reached at 360-681-2390, ext. 5052, or at jsmillie@peninsuladailynews.com.