Marathon Rehearsal

Today was our pre-tour rehearsal extravaganza. It was characterized most memorably by remarkable patience from Fountain and horrible faxed parts for the Chinese pieces. It was fabulous to look across the orchestra to see John, Henry, and Christian (and to hear some damn fine alumni violinists bringing up the rear of the sections). It was not fabulous to have my cell phone go off in the middle of the whole thing. Since my phone makes a horrible and unsophisticated sound, Fountain asked with very British indignation: "What IS that noise?"

Benny D was feeling a bit tired, having just flown into Nashville with his parents (who are chaperoning us!) this morning:



But the 2nd stand of second violins (Eva and Kayleigh) and the 1st stand of cellos (Micah and Sarah) were feeling frisky.





On my walk home from rehearsal, I got pretty nostalgic. This whole lead-up to tour makes me so incredibly grateful for a place like Blair. All these people who know me as a person and as a musician, all these incredible teachers. When I have days that make me think I have to be a musician forever, I sometimes wonder if I just want to be a Blair student forever. Which is pretty impossible. Although Connie Heard has nearly done it.

A late night game of Capture the Flag is being secretly planned to take place in Blair today. I hope I can get some pictures of THAT, by God ... but in the meantime, here is a cute picture of TZ with the Blair Nutcracker, whose whirring motor makes us all think someone is vacuuming, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.



Bless you Mr. Nutcracker!

Pre-tour phase begins.

A small impromptu gathering of friends on the night before our first rehearsal yields some key revelations: Abi has learned a pretty excellent amount of Chinese, for example. I may or may not cling to such folks once we get there. Or just study really hard with my little CD, which jumps wayyyy too quickly from "hello" to "we have a reservation at this hotel." Whoa there.

It's going to be fabulous and a little surreal to see yesterday's alumni playing in the same orchestra with today's freshmen. A kind of time warp orchestra. Perhaps the kind of orchestra we all wish we could play in: made up of friends from different times and places, but of course, conducted by Robin Fountain. (David Zinman is my second choice.)

Upon John and Dave's return, they will find that little has changed. There's still a little homoeroticism bubbling under the surface:



And we find that little has changed with them, especially with regards to John's "whatever" pose:



We've got rehearsal today and I've not been a very diligent violinist this week. Better hit the ground running ...

Yesss, another tour journal.

For the third time in my life, I have a Tour Journal. I'm really excited about this. It's a sort of unofficial tradition in my life, which I'll now have to keep every time I travel, especially in groups. I have a blue-and-gold spiral journal from the summer of 2002, in which GBYSO traveled to Central Europe for a concert tour. I have a very organic-looking purple one from summer 2003, when we went to San Francisco and Napa Valley.

These journals are primarily my own: I kept them with me, wrote in them all the time. But as often as I could, I handed them to my friends on the tour bus, and they jotted down their own entries. As you can imagine, the entries from my sixteen-year-old friends back in high school range from the silly to the naive to the amazing and profound. It is wonderful to read them.

Of course, this means I have to keep the tour journal pretty 'clean', so you know, if I end up having some kind of whirlwind romantic affair, it will be unprintable in a journal which is by necessity sort of public. (That's why I'll take along a second journal, only for what truly must be private. Possible inclusions: dirty dreams I had, unsympathetic rants, hit lists, anti-equal rights statements ... the usual.) No really, when a girl's got two journals, you know you're dealing with something serious. I'll probably use the tour journal as a guide for this site, the most public of all journals. Oh, the Internets; oh, the Earth.

Five days before takeoff ...

For the next few weeks, this blog will transform from Plain Ol' Blog to Amazing China Tour! Blog. A fabulous and easy transition, which occurs only because a) I start writing in this thing again, and b) the orchestra goes to China.

Small flurries of excitement are traveling from computer to computer on facebook. Little postings of anticipation have been left on walls everywhere. Juliet posted photos of our most exotic destinations on the still-thriving "Tune That Shit" page. We're all isolated from each other this week, but are united by the unreal prospect of traveling across the world to play some concerts.

It's been five years since I left the US, and for lots of orchestra members, this will be their first international experience. So many things I have difficulty believing: are people really going to stop just to get photos with some white people? Is Robin Fountain really going to conduct the Cowboys Overture in front of thousands of Chinese?

It remains to be seen. I've got a new winter coat, a new digital camera, and a reinvented blog. Tools for traveling success. Now about that long underwear and anti-diarrhea medication ...