Winding Down
I don't actually have a lot to say tonight, and there appears to be a massive orchestra hang going on at our hotel bar that I want to get in on, so I hope you'll settle for a few bullet points from our Willmar tour stop...
- The concert hall here is a very cool old stage in a big, imposing brick building in the center of town, which makes for a nice contrast with a lot of the other modern rooms we're playing on this trip. We've been here before, three seasons ago, and my memory of the crowd as enthusiastic and warm was quite correct. Real good people they got out here.
- The awesome chocolatier that we all remembered from our last trip here has moved out of its beautiful old location downtown (same old story, ask any small town in America) and into a strip mall on the edge of the highway south of town. Even more disappointing, it closes at 1pm on Saturdays, as many orchestra members discovered when we rolled in at 3. Megan, Jen, and I alleviated the pain by paying a visit to the Scandihoovian outpost I mentioned earlier, and more or less cleaning it out of Nordic chocolate bars and books of old Finnish wisdom to use against Osmo as the occasion arises.
- The unsung heroes of these tours are really our tireless stagehands, who have to work just as hard on a tour of outstate Minnesota as they would on a tour of Europe. They have to arrive at every new stop hours ahead of us, and insure that every bit of cargo (and we have thousands of pounds of it - instruments, wardrobes, podiums, stands, you name it) is unloaded, placed correctly, unlocked, unpacked, and readied for the orchestra's arrival. Simultaneously, they have to work in perfect tandem with the in-house crew of whatever hall we're visiting and make sure that our stage, sound, and lighting needs are perfectly understood. During the concert, they have to make any required stage changes quietly and efficiently, even if the amount of room on the stage is less than ideal. Finally, once the musicians are done for the night, and head off to party, sleep, or otherwise entertain ourselves, the crew packs everything up again, loads it into our specially climate-controlled semi trailer, and heads for the next town. It can be an awfully thankless job, and our crew is one of the very best in the business.
- We've got one more stop on this trip, tomorrow afternoon in the Finn-intensive town of Cokato. The concert's at 2pm, and we'll make the 1-hour drive for home right after we're done. Since I plan on collapsing onto my couch with two cats and a beer the minute I arrive, I doubt I'll be blogging. So let's consider this the last entry in this mini-travelogue. It's about time I let Sarah get a couple of words in edgewise anyway, and I'll be back later in the week to talk about the freakish and terrifying world of orchestra auditions...
- The concert hall here is a very cool old stage in a big, imposing brick building in the center of town, which makes for a nice contrast with a lot of the other modern rooms we're playing on this trip. We've been here before, three seasons ago, and my memory of the crowd as enthusiastic and warm was quite correct. Real good people they got out here.
- The awesome chocolatier that we all remembered from our last trip here has moved out of its beautiful old location downtown (same old story, ask any small town in America) and into a strip mall on the edge of the highway south of town. Even more disappointing, it closes at 1pm on Saturdays, as many orchestra members discovered when we rolled in at 3. Megan, Jen, and I alleviated the pain by paying a visit to the Scandihoovian outpost I mentioned earlier, and more or less cleaning it out of Nordic chocolate bars and books of old Finnish wisdom to use against Osmo as the occasion arises.
- The unsung heroes of these tours are really our tireless stagehands, who have to work just as hard on a tour of outstate Minnesota as they would on a tour of Europe. They have to arrive at every new stop hours ahead of us, and insure that every bit of cargo (and we have thousands of pounds of it - instruments, wardrobes, podiums, stands, you name it) is unloaded, placed correctly, unlocked, unpacked, and readied for the orchestra's arrival. Simultaneously, they have to work in perfect tandem with the in-house crew of whatever hall we're visiting and make sure that our stage, sound, and lighting needs are perfectly understood. During the concert, they have to make any required stage changes quietly and efficiently, even if the amount of room on the stage is less than ideal. Finally, once the musicians are done for the night, and head off to party, sleep, or otherwise entertain ourselves, the crew packs everything up again, loads it into our specially climate-controlled semi trailer, and heads for the next town. It can be an awfully thankless job, and our crew is one of the very best in the business.
- We've got one more stop on this trip, tomorrow afternoon in the Finn-intensive town of Cokato. The concert's at 2pm, and we'll make the 1-hour drive for home right after we're done. Since I plan on collapsing onto my couch with two cats and a beer the minute I arrive, I doubt I'll be blogging. So let's consider this the last entry in this mini-travelogue. It's about time I let Sarah get a couple of words in edgewise anyway, and I'll be back later in the week to talk about the freakish and terrifying world of orchestra auditions...
posted by Sam at
9:42 PM
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