Lost and Found

LOST:
one English horn
one computer
$200 cash
one American passport (thankfully, none of these things were mine)
our collective sanity
my heart (last seen in Colombia with Andres Lopera and Bernardo Alviz, in Ecuador with Dante Anzollini, and in Rio de Janeiro with Xiomara Mass)
two pairs of dress shoes and one favorite earring


FOUND:
Hope
Friends
Brahms
Jesus (the big one in Rio)

Brazil, cont.

After a day or two of very little food and lots of sleep, I'm much better! The concert in Ribeirao Preto (THAT was the city I was in!) went well despite how sick I was. It was one of the most beautiful halls we've played in so far, and probably had the best acoustic. It was great, because I could play the soft solos in the 2nd movement of the Shostakovich without working so hard to make the sound go to the back of the hall. I thought I could have puked at any moment, though. Exciting.
So now we are on the home stretch. After our concert tonight in Araraquara, we will be on a bus for an entire day to drive to Rio de Janeiro.

I'm kind of into lists right now, so...

Things that could potentially happen on a YOA bus after a concert:
1. a massive pillow fight (there are small pillows stored in the upper shelves)
2. we start singing Colombia Tierra Querida
3. everyone falls asleep within 5 minutes of leaving
4. we start chanting someone's name if they did a good job
5. we start chanting "MUCHA ROPAS!" and then some people take off their clothes

That last one is how I know that "striptease" in Brazilian Portuguese is pronounced "strippytcheesy." Seriously. This group is crazy.

Another list.

Things that could potentially happen during a YOA encore:
1. We start without the conductor on stage by accident.
2. If we're in Brazil, all 7 Brazilian members of the orchestra get up in front and take their shirts off to reveal soccer jerseys underneath. The audience likes that.
3. Sometimes one of those guys actually wears an Argentina jersey over his Brazil jersey. He takes off his shirt, everyone boos, and then he takes off Argentina and throws it somewhere and everyone cheers.
4. Someone almost gets hit by a bass. Bernardo usually dances while carrying his bass above his head.
5. There could be a giant conga line that snakes through the aisles in the audience.

Really, if you haven't seen a YOA encore, you haven't really lived.

This is bad.

I don't know what city I'm in. I don't know what day it is. All I know is that I have a concert in an hour and 20 minutes and I can't stop throwing up.

Eighteen concerts and four more to go.

As our sprint to the finish continues, the Youth Orchestra of the Americas finds itself in Poco de Caldas in the state of Minas Gerais, Brazil. We are staying in an absolutely charming old hotel with many architectural details - high ceilings, old moldings, tiled floors, wide verandas and shuttered windows that open up into courtyards. There is a rumor that the 3rd floor is haunted. There are only 3 floors of the hotel, so a good portion of the orchestra is staying there and we are all walking around in a sleep-deprived daze, watching out for something out of The Shining.

Our concert last night in Sao Paulo was amazing. The program: selections from West Side Story, Beethoven's Violin Concerto, and Brahms' Symphony no. 1. Our flute section has been undergoing some sad changes - my best friend in the orchestra and fellow flautista, Olga Bertinat of Uruguay was called home to deal with some issues surrounding her orchestra job in Montevideo. She won't be finishing the tour with us, and I'm now covering her parts. There has been a lot of juggling of parts lately - in Sao Paulo, one of the flutists here was very ill and couldn't really play the concert, so I covered her parts as well. I played principal flute on all three pieces and did an okay job.

Olga plays piccolo and flute with an orchestra in Montevideo. She's an amazing person, full of humor and kindness. She's also very sensitive to justice and cares a lot about doing what is right. She cares deeply about music and plays very expressively. She has a boyfriend, Alex, and a dog, Danilo. She swears in English. She will be missed!

Peru and the best day ever

So, we are in Lima and have given two concerts so far. We have one more tonight and then we fly to Sao Paulo tomorrow morning for the home stretch - Brazil!
The day before yesterday we had a completely free day - that felt weird. So of course they had things planned for us. Here's what I did:
1. Saw crazy old Incan ruins outside of Lima. Link to pictures coming soon. Took the Spanish version of the tour and actually understood some things.
2. YOA has a way of giving us alcohol at the (usually) wrong time - like before we eat lunch after a long morning of walking around Incan ruins.
3. We started drinking at this horse ranch where the horses are trained to dance! We continued to drink (they served us this specific kind of Peruvian alcohol that is mixed with lime juice and raw egg) as the horses did this cool show for us. The people had beautiful costumes.
4. I ate beef heart without knowing it. And then I ate more beef heart KNOWING it.
5. They served us lunch. If there is one thing you need to know about Peru, it's that the food is AMAZING. This might have been the best lunch I've ever had.
6. A band played. And a group of folk dancers came to dance for us. It was really cool!

More posts about Peru soon...

En Lima, que lindo

Our last day in Quito was both spectacular and spectacularly difficult: we made a professional recording of Philip Glass' Cello Concerto. The orchestra got to the hall at 11 am and finished at 8 pm - and we were so tired. Glass was there, as was his wife, Wendy Sutter, who plays the cello solo. We played the concerto, along with Mahler 4, two nights ago to a packed house at our last concert in Quito. In the cello concerto, it's very difficult to get all the parts to match up, and we had an extra challenge with a particularly boomy hall. It's also difficult because the orchestra couldn't hear the cellist for most of the piece due to the natural acoustics of the hall and the thick texture of the orchestration. It's like jumping into a pool blind. For the recording, we had to do a lot of repetitions of tiny little parts. By the end of the day, we were on take 189. Some of those takes were entire movements, some were just one measure. It was exhausting, but I think the recording is going to be good.

That was yesterday. Today we got to get up at 4:30 am to fly to Lima, Peru! It's really foggy here. Lima is right by the Pacific ocean and there are some parts that remind me of the sunset district in San Francisco. After just one meal here, the food has really lived up to it's reputation. Lima is the ceviche capital of the world and I am willing to agree after having eaten just a little bit of ceviche pescado at our hotel for lunch. It's raw fish cured with lime and other seasonings. Amazing!

otra familia

Now in its second residency in Quito, Ecuador, the orchestra is playing Mahler's 4th symphony and two pieces by Phillip Glass, our composer-in-residence. The orchestra is...exhausted, sick, and continually pushed. I am feeling fine, with the exception of a painful cough. We are still getting used to the altitude in Quito and some people are experiencing headaches.
On top of this, two members of the orchestra have lost grandmothers in the last few days. It is so hard for them to be away from their families and far away from home. We help each other by offering stashed food, vitamin C tablets, covering each others' parts in rehearsals, and with lots of hugs.
Quito is a beautiful city surrounded by mountains. We haven't seen too much of it because we've been shuttled between the hotel and the concert hall, which is quite far away and up a steep hill. The clouds here are beautiful - there are lots of eucalyptus trees and other flowers. One of my favorite parts is that all the buses have names painted across their front windows - "Trans-Zeta," "El Rey de la Via," etc. Fun...we even had a bus that had a furry covering for the outside of the rear view mirror.