COLLECTIVE COMPOSING
Emmanuel, Frances, and I wrote our first-ever joint composition. It's called "Postcards from Dilsberg," is about 14 minutes long, and is in my humble opinion pretty awesome! The work process was tedious, trying to improvise collectively, and streamline our differing ideas into one cohesive whole... but the end result is something we're all proud of. We premiered the piece at our concert here on July 6 (see below). We were working on it until the day of the performance. The piece consists of five movements:
I. Morning in Dilsberg:
The Neckar River winds around Dilsberg. The birds sing. The sun shines.
II. Ready for Battle.
III. The Legendary Sleeping Chamber.
IV. Rose of Dilsberg.
V. Triumphal March (In Honor of Dilsberg’s 800th Anniversary)
PERU BENEFIT CONCERT:
Early on during our stay in Dilsberg, my Dad went for an early morning walk and met a man tending the bee hive. My Dad asked if he could buy honey from him, and the man asked him to come by his house later on that day. We went with my Dad, met the man, his wife, and their dog, and started talking about their experience living in Dilsberg, what we are doing here, etc. We found out that they are very active in the Catholic Church, and that the lady is the head of a committee in charge of a sister-church relationship with a church in Peru, and that they occasional try to rasie funds for their Peruvian sister-church. We offered to play a benefit concert, and so the planning started... Posters were printed and posted around the area, invitations were sent out, the media was alerted... and we practiced, of course! The concert took place this past Sunday, July 6 and was a great success. The church was packed (standing room only!), the program was very well received (consisted of works ranging from peaceful favorites such as Ave Maria, Ave Verum, and Meditation from Thais to virtuoso works such as Ravel's Jeux d'Eau, Sarasate's Zigeunderweisen, and Popper's Hungarian Rhapsody, and THE PREMEIRE of our composition, "Postcards from Dilsberg," which received a standing ovation). After the concert, we received a special surprise (more like a shock) when renowned conductor Maestro Mario Venzago came to congratulate us! Yikes! We were glad we didn't know that he was in the audience prior to the performance... Afterwards we enjoyed a reception during which the local historic dance troupe performed several dances for us.
CONCERT FOR OUR OMA
We visited our Oma and celebrated her 89th birthday! She was in good spirits and sang many German folk songs with my Dad. The day after her birthday, we performed a concert in the Repelen Evangelical Church, very close to where my Oma lives.
