À la recherche du temps perdu

I'm home in Toronto after two months of being other places, mostly.

At the end of May I went to Halifax for two weeks to be a student at a chamber music festival. I stayed with the parents of a friend at the Conservatory. Brenna's father used to be a fisherman and now runs his own seafood distrubution company. He thought sleeping until 7:30 was lazy, didn't drink or smoke, and drank about 5 cups of coffee a day. Her mom baked the most amazing rhubarb pies. I had a great time.

I played in a masterclass for my old teacher from McGill. I got more nervous to play for him than any other performance in the past year or so. One of my yoga teachers in Toronto happened to be in Halifax then, too, and she came to the class and loved it. A weird collision of worlds.

I came back to Toronto, and then went to Boston for two weeks. Saw just about everybody that might be reading this. Time flew.

I bought a new camera, and this was the first picture I took:



I think it captures Tony pretty well. I haven't figured out how to rotate pictures yet.

I went back to Toronto for about 16 hours and hopped on a plane to Italy. Just before I left Halifax I had received an email inviting me to go teach and play chamber music at a little festival in Orvieto, a small medieval town up on cliffs about an hour north of Rome. Since my only plans were to sit around in Toronto and play weddings, I said yes, even though it wasn't terribly well paying (or, really, at all- they bought my plane ticket, and food & lodging).

On my flight over I had a five hour layover in Zurich, which was just enough time to go have breakfast at my aunt's house, and meet my three-week old niece. Oh my goodness, she's amazing. I'm in love.


I had an amazing time in Orvieto. There were only five students, not much younger than me- a violinist who just finished her junior year of college, a cellist who just finished college, a pianist in the middle of her master's, another pianist who was a meteorologist in Dublin, and a singer at the end of her bachelor's. I played in two groups and coached a third. There was also an Italian violinist who joined us for a string quatet, and who didn't speak much English. As I told the director when she asked me how rehearsals were going, if I had to pick a foreign country where I didn't speak the language to have a music festival in, I would pick Italy. For the non-musicians reading, all of the common musical terminology is Italian, so I only had to learn a few more words and stop trying to use adjectives (try finding 'leprechaun' in a phrasebook...)

Italy: famous for espresso.
Orvieto: famous for its giant Duomo, and its white wine.

A great combination.

I really enjoyed getting to know the town over the three weeks. The first weekend I went to Florence with two of the students, and I liked it and had a great time, but the next weekend I passed on a trip to Rome and spent the weekend walking around Orvieto. It's a big tourist town, both for Italians and foreigners, so it was fun to start to feel like I belonged just a little. The first time I went to my usual cafe and the barista said, "Espresso?" and smiled was very exciting for me.

Capella came and stayed with me for the last week. Fantastic.

For the final concert I had been asked to play a sonata with one of the pianists, but only after I had arrived. I hadn't brought any music with me, of course, so Capella would have to email it. I already had pdf files for a sonata by a rather obscure Dutch composer, Julius Roentgen, so I had Capella send that. Who should happen to be in Orvieto for only the night of that last concert, see a poster, and decide to come to the show? Roentgen's grandson, Julian. He introduced himself at intermission and told me, "I opened the programme and saw my name!"

After the festival we went to Budapest for five days to see the city and some of my relatives. We saw a lot in a few days and had a fantastic time. My three favorite pictures:

After a long meal at Uncle Miklos' house. Man, I was stuffed. But it was impossible to say no to more food. I finally realized that the only way to end a course was to leave a little bit of food on my plate. I wish I had figured it out sooner...



Detail from a fence along Andrassy Ut, where many countries now have embassies. We had spent the morning at the Sechenyi baths, a thermal bath house with about 15 indoor and outdoor pools of different temperatures, shapes and sizes. Made friends with a Hungarian couple about our age when we got to the 18 C pool at the same time, and realized how cold it felt at the same time... We walked from one end of Andrassy Ut to the other because it was Monday and all the museums were closed. Stopped at the opera house and took a tour. It's a beautiful building, built towards the end of the Hapsburg empire. Afterwards we took the subway back to the baths and met my aunt, who drove us home.



One of the diminishing number of Eastern European cars in Hungary. They're small, but not quite as small as a friend thought when she first saw this picture...

And now I'm home again. And sitting in my pajamas, sipping tea, and being lazy. Perfect.