Well, I have been back in Trujillo now for just over a
week, my two weeks “vacation” whizzed past in a blur of meeting friends and
enjoying the sunshine! For various
reasons, my trip back included not a flight up to Trujillo from Lima but by
bus. This was a wonderful experience, not least for the luxury of the coach,
but a real eye-opener inasmuch as I got to see the peculiar environment of this
desert strip that comes up from the Atacama in Chile, for 9 hours we drove
through sand dunes, bleak rocky hills and mountains and all to the
accompaniment of the pacific ocean. A real wilderness, broken up by windswept
villages, towns and eventually the city of Trujillo.
Today is Independence Day in Peru, EVERY house is adorned
by a flag and many have been repainted. In fact it was the law until recently
that houses had to be painted and flags displayed for this day. I caught the
tail end of a HUGE parade last Friday, the parade is not today as the many
military units will all be parading in Lima today. I was amazed that almost every unit of the
military had its own distinctive face paint and the parade had something of a carnival
atmosphere about it, good humoured but slightly chaotic.
Unfortunately my arrival here and a very unwelcome drop
of some 15 degrees in temperature enabled me to enjoy three days with a heavy
cold and that hotly followed by a stomach bug (and today the cold is back!). So
rather than spending the time getting back into the reins I was stuck in bed or
the bathroom.
I did of course manage to meet up with Maestro Alvarez
and deliver the new batons I had purchased for him and we planned to meet up to
discuss future arrangements for concerts etc.
I so very much want to build on
the great success of my concert on July 4th - record audience -
record applause – and a great empathy with the orchestra. But, hey that was 2
weeks ago and now a thing of the past.
I am about to take up the position of Director of Music
with Trijillo’s major youth orchestra - the Orchestra de Barro, part of Arpegio
Peru. For the last month they have been under the baton and tutelage of Arndt
Anhugan, a violinist with the world Famous Royal Concertibouw Orchestra of
Holland and had a concert last Thursday, this would be my time hearing them and
I was very excited about this, as on the basis of this concert I would know
what the possibilities and challenges are for the future. The concert was wonderful, the orchestra
numbers just short of 50 and they gave extremely credible performances of works
by Beethoven, Sibelius, Schubert and Dvorak.
On August 16th the Orchestra de Barro and the
Trujillo Symphony orchestra are to give a joint concert, this joint orchestra
will then be about 80 - 90 strong and Maestro Alvarez and I have been working
hard to find a suitable programme, which we will jointly present at the concert
to be held in the Cathedral, both he and I are extremely excited by this event,
to the point where we are already talking about a second event next February!
Whilst in the UK I did some serious thinking about my
work here, sadly the lack of interest and dedication in many students at the
conservatoire has led me to reluctantly decide that I need to reduce my hours
there, of course my new duties with Arpegio will more than take up the slack!
But things are all in limbo a bit at the moment as
Independence Day on Sunday has led to an elongated weekend with many
organisations not going back to work until next Wednesday, having shut up on
shop on Friday.
And, of course, I got the biggest welcome back ever from my dear Nick...........
So, this is just a brief restart to my two-weekly
blogging, see you in a fortnight.
