Getting Real

Things are getting VERY REAL. How do I know?

New polo shirts for concerts.

Well, the long-awaited polo shirts arrived! This picture does not do the shirt proud - the blue is actually much brighter. The white embroidery in the logo looks like pearls almost. They are beautiful. The new concert costume (who wants to carry a full folk costume? Not me! ) is this shirt and black slacks. I think we will look fabulous, and plenty dressed up. Of course, we have our regular t-shirts as well. We all agree, though, that these were worth the expense and the wait! 

Concert in Voss!

The flurry of activity this week in my life as Director was around the first few shows. I sent promotional materials to various places, including the Voss Church. When this flyer arrived today, Friday, June 23, things got extremely real! I remember sitting in the Voss Church last summer listening to a singer and my friend, the pianist Inger-Kristine Riber, in concert. At the end, I was introduced to the person who organizes the church concerts. She was told that I was touring with the Seattle Lilla Spelmanslag, and she immediately offered us a concert. That was the first one I booked. It's going to be amazing, in the beautiful, historic old stone church. 

The Voss Church

The plan is to march in playing hardingfele, together with Arne and Margunn, his musical partner for the day. We will play about 25 minutes of regular fiddle music, and then I hope Arne and Margunn will play, and if possible we will join together at the end for a couple of tunes on the hardanger fiddle. 

Meanwhile, the kids have spent the last two weeks doing partner practice. The idea was to play as a soloist with one other person, so each one has to carry their own weight. This was an experiment;  I had not tried it before. But, it went very well! I think the kids each learned something from their partner by way of feedback, and even I got some good feedback about polishing my harmony for one of our tunes. They sounded fabulous this week when I heard each student. Musically, I think we are ready! 

The book. 

And then it was time to make the infamous travel books for leaders. In the book can be found all of the really important stuff... permission to take the kids overseas, schedules, reservation copies, health information and so on. The same notebooks have made two previous tours, to Sweden (2013) and to Denmark (2017). In assembling the books, Sue, our Assistant Director, and I discovered some things we wanted were not yet printed, got that handled easily.  I sure hope everything is in there. 

The coming days will bring my first trial pack - it's a question of whether or not I can fit in a small suitcase, even with all the stuff I need to carry for the tour. Maybe? There are some last details to finalize, like the the time of the very first pop-up concert, and whether or not we can get practice time in the church to figure out how to place our instruments and hear what the sound is like. Sue and I will have our last planning session on Monday after work. 

Yep, it's getting real, people. Very VERY real. Departure in just seven days - one week!