Meistersinger was a success in Luxembourg! The Premiere went as good as flawless!! It was such a blast to finally present what we had been working on for so many weeks. The audience was fairly small, about 300 people, only a few of which walked out before the show was over. From my position in the orchestra I could see a decent portion of the audience and they seemed captivated and entertained and even got some of the jokes. At the end the orchestra got to ascend to the stage and take bows. I've never played for a theater show and got to go on stage to be recognized! The Volksbühne is certainly unique in many ways. Afterwards it was time to PARTY! THe Volksbühne band was flown out just to play for our Premiere Party. There was food, drinks, and lots of excited people. We partied into the wee hours of the evening before turning in to get some rest for the second show………which got canceled! The lead male role, the only lead role that acutally has a trained voice, got sick and couldn't perform. I would have liked to have played again, but it was nice to have that great memory of a good performance to motiviate us when we start the show again. So ended our work in Luxembourg. So we did what any other normal group of performers would do, we went out and partied again! This time it was to celebrate a few birthdays. We reaped havoc in a great bar and ended up getting kicked out because it they wanted to close. Most bars there close at 1AM, we managed to overstay our welcome well over an hour. Suffice to say that much of Luxembourg took a sigh of relief as we parted the next day. I for one could hardly wait to get back to Berlin! There were many newspaper reviews, most of which were lukewarm….but the real permiere will be here at home in September.
My next musical endeavor came a few days later as I played for the Eisler Prize Competition at my school. My performance was great and I really enjoyed the other pieces. I didn't win any prizes, neither did Max's piece, but we got a ton of positive feedback AND it got me another job! The director of Ensemble Mosaik, a well renowned new music ensemble in Berlin, was there and happened to be looking for another trumpet player and now has booked me to play with them in July! I couldn't be more thrilled, this connection is better than any award. They want me to be a semi-regular member of the group, which means more work in the future. Ironically this may include a trip back to Luxembourg in the fall to play in the SAME theater I played in with the Volksbühne….atleast this time only for a couple days!
The success of the Competition performance paved the way for another great performance of the piece this past weekend for a concert series by a group called Klangnetz. I'm so appreciative of this group! They organize new music concerts for up and coming composers and recieve enough financial support that the musicians and composers can be well paid for their services! We played in Ballhaus Mitte, an old run down Ballroom thats half restaurant half dance venue with free swing and Tango courses. This concert was all solo piece, 2 each for trumpet, percussion, harp, and cello. All wonderful musicians that I hadn't met before. The room is absolutely breathtaking and with surprsingly good acoustics. The only downside was the heat and the dry air. I was sweating like a pig but had not one drop of moisture in my mouth which makes trumpet playing quite difficult. Despite this I made it through Maxs piece and the other piece, "Waft", by Petr Bakla. The Bakla piece is ridiculously difficult and basically forces the player into making mistakes. Despite my struggles, the composer was happy with my performance! What I see as instrumentalist torture, he sees as "exciting unpredictability". I'm glad he was satisfied!
Now I have a bit of time before working with Ensemble Mosaik in July. I've got a lot to practice, including singing and playing at the same time (gotta love new music) and a lot of catching up to do with laying out on the canal in the sun. By the way, you can hear a radio broadcast of the Eisler Prize Competition on Friday June 23rd at 10pm germany time (thats 2pm in California). Details are in the "Upcoming performances" page.
