bambuco, la piscina, y muchos ensayos

We are still at the residency and rehearsing about 5-6 hours per day. It's pretty tiring, but we are having fun, too. The flutes from Orquestra Jovem de Colombia and YOA have combined to make a chamber music group. We are playing an arrangement of a bambuco song called Il Papi. Bambuco is Colombian music, very rhythmic, very difficult. It's hard to get the right style. Luckily, we have two Colombianos to show us the way, but I don't know if we will ever get it right.
This orchestra, in addition to working hard, also knows how to relax. There is a party every night at the pool that goes late into the night. Sometimes someone brings a guitar. The sky here is so dark that you can see the Milky Way and way more stars than in Chicago.
One challenging aspect here is laundry. There are laundry services, but they are very expensive. So everyone is handwashing their clothes and hanging them on the balconies. But it's been windy, so the whole resort is littered with underwear right now.
Our favorite conductor, Carlos Miguel Prieto, arrived yesterday and began working with us on Shostakovich, among other things. We will have a big rehearsal tonight for the music from West Side Story. He's a good conductor and a good human being.
Our lives are little boring right now. We will begin the actual tour in earnest in four days. Then it will be non-stop - we will drive to a few cities in Colombia and then take something like four flights within the country. Then we fly to Quito. Then we fly to Peru. Then to Sao Paulo. I think after that we are on a bus until we go home. But this tour isn't light on the fossil fuels.