WI Choir Tour 2007

When we left Florence we travelled to Venice where we stayed in a hotel in a place called Stra. It was about a half hour by bus to pick up the boat to get to San Marco Square. When we arrived we had a wonderful tour of Doge Museum with two wonderful guides. We had to leave our personal affects in the back of the Basilica at St Mark’s, but it was difficult to find someone to know what we were talking about when we told them who we were and needed to leave our things. Fortunately, Rosanne Guadagnini speaks fluent Italian and with her skill she talked the guard into letting us in to leave our things.

So far it has rained almost every day since we have been here. In Rome it was rather warm, but since arriving in Florence, Venice, Munich and now Salzburg, it has been cold and wet. This wasn’t really what we were expecting.

Our concert at St Mark’s was an amazing experience singing in a church where Vivaldi worked and dates back to the 15 C.

Upon our arrival in Munich we were met by a friend of mine who played trombone in my orchestra in Jerusalem. He took off work and showed us some of the interesting sites and then came with us to our concert last night. 
It was a more modern church and the people were very friendly and gave us a supper after the concert. We were even blessed to see some former students who came to our concert.

Dachau was an experience I didn’t want the group to miss. I had been advocating that the group not do so much talking on the bus especially before a concert in order to save their voices. After our stop at Dachau the bus was silent for at least 2 hours. It was very heavy, but a necessary lesson to include in this tour.

We are here in Salzburg and I have had a great time showing the students where I went to school at the Mozarteum. The office staff were very gracious and allowed me to show them the rooms where I performed and had violin lessons.

Today we sang in the church in Mondsee where the wedding scene was made in Sound of Music. The sound was magnificent.

Tomorrow we leave for Vienna for the big competition. I think everyone is a bit nervous and excited at the same time.

More later…