I am very happy that it is officially spring according to the calendar, although I'm not sure the weather has changed accordingly. I was recently in Seattle, Washington and Portland, Oregon and it was quite nice there. Very breezy and a little chilly, but there was NO SNOW. Even though it rained about seven of the ten days I was there I still loved it. It made you really appreciate the sun when it was out. I just LOVED the northwest, it is seriously so beautiful there! If you have ever read the description of Washington in the popular Twilight books it is EXACTLY like that. When I got there, I have to admit I was a bit skeptical about the weather but I grew to enjoy the difference in it from what I was used to back home in Minnesota.
Wow, there is just so much I want to talk about and so little brain energy to put it all into sentences, but I shall try. Let me first explain why I was in the Northwest. I play cello in my university's orchestra an we were on tour around the NW playing a total of 11 concerts in a week at different churches and Christian schools in Washington and Oregon. So needless to say I spent most of my spring break dressed in concert black and on a coach bus, but I think it is safe to say we all had a great time and got to know one another much better. Anywho, The first church we played at was very welcoming and our host family's house, or condo, was pretty sweet. When we are on tour we couple up with another person to stay at host family's houses each night, sometimes there are four of us or more staying in one house. It's usually a good experience and we have a lot of fun. At this first house we managed to get our own rooms and thus our own beds. (usually you end up sharing two to a bed) The beds I think must have had that Tempur-Pedic style foam on them because they were SO comfy! The only reason I'm talking about this is because you don't usually end up with great mattresses when you're on tour, it could even be a cot on the floor. And since the NW is two hours behind MN time we were all super tired after our first concert because we also flew in that day and had about five hours on the bus so we just zonked out before 10:30 Seattle time.
We did one or two concerts each day and had about two and a half free days while we were there just to tour the area and see the sights. Most of us went downtown Seattle or to Pike's Place Market where they have all sorts of venders and things for sale from flowers to fish. Right down the road from there is the original Starbucks, which if you didn't know, got it's name from Starbuck who is a character from the novel Moby Dick. There were also a ton or street performers and musicians and people who did random stuff on sidewalks hoping to earn some extra cash. Most of them were pretty cool, but a few of them were pretty sketch-ish so we didn't linger much.
We were free to travel anywhere on our own or in groups of however many we wanted. For the most part we were in groups, but since there were only 24 students and three adults, the groups were smaller and not so touristy.
We played in a variety of venues including sanctuaries, gymnasiums, and rooms we thought would not hold the number of people they did. It was very interesting to see each new place and to get used to the layout, find our changing rooms, the bathrooms and our way around the place in general. Each new place we played at provided it's own unique sound to our music, its own spacing problems for where we were going to sit and play our concerts and a new place to put the piano and keyboard we needed. Oh, I forgot to mention, for this tour we were only a string ensemble because the band was on tour in the Midwest at the same time as we were in the NW so we could not use any winds or percussion. We did however have two wonderful pieces played with piano, one was by Gerald Finzi and the other was a movement of a concerto by Ernest Block. the Finzi piece is just so beautiful, as our conductor Dr. Lynda Bradley-Vacco describes it, it sounds as if it could be the soundtrack to any 18th century British women's literature like Pride and Prejudice, Wuthering Heights, or Sense and Sensibility. It is this intimate dialogue between instruments and is so delicate yet has such a beautiful theme. At the time it was published, it did not have a title so the printer named it "Eclogue" which means "a short poem or pastoral dialogue" which describes it perfectly.
A few other stories I have include visiting a glass museum, going across the Tacoma Narrows bridge, doing The Morning Show on the bus (I might describe this later), having a couple weird homestays, having fun at hotels, having the stomech flu and cold passed around the orchestra, a huge bottle of Purell, musical confessions, B.O.S.S. nominations, the Holy Bow, getting cash stolen out of our wallets at a church during a concert (later replaced graciously by the church), a totally awesome homestay in which there were five of us in one giant house WITH wireless, meeting awesome people, seeing a sign for Port Angelos, having a host mom who's son-in-law lived in Forks, being in Washington while Twilight was released on DVD, participating in "The Great Debate: Which is Better, Harry Potter or Twilight?" at the Seatlle public library, having only three guys on the trip and only one of them single, and too many more to mention.
Basically it was AMAZING. And up 'til now I have never visited a place where I have considered to be a place I might want to live someday. The NW just made the list.
Thanks for reading!
PS (perhaps more to come on this orchestra tour subject, I haven't decided)
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