busy week

This is one of those weeks.  Yesterday was one of those days.  Rehearsal from 10 - 2, then an audition, then rehearsal (for a different project) from 6 - 9.  The audition went OK.  It was for a festival in France, they round up (by audition) an orchestra and a cast of singers and spend the summer putting together a production of an opera, then spend parts of the next fall taking it on tour.  It's well-paid.  They take just one bass for the orchestra.  So I'm not going to hold my breath waiting to get it.  But I did practice a lot.  It went as well as it could have, considering my crazy morning, commuting with bass (not too far but up hills and on trams and down long blocks), trying to put together a quick CV, and warming up for about 3 minutes.  I could feel my legs shaking under me, and hear myself giving inane answers to the questions I was asked.  It was video recorded (though not the question-answer session, thankfully).  Maybe it was better to have been running around before hand; I had less time to get nervous.

In the evening I had the second rehearsal for a Haydn Schöpfung (the Creation) I'll be playing in Basel, my third Schöpfung of the year.  This one's got something on the others I've done, and not just because it's local; it's with a boy choir.  It's really quite different.  When rehearsal started, you could see on the faces of everyone in the orchestra, we couldn't keep from smiling; there's something about their voices.  Also, they're damn loud.  It's a Wall of Sound.  I tried to find a good video of them on youtube but everything up was shot by a parent, and so is invariably from a terrible angle, with bad sound.  One of them (a bit of Messiah) shows my favorite kid (that I could see last night), one of the little ones that sings soprano.  So earnest and cute!  One of them was wearing a t-shirt with a dinosaur on it; my favorite was wearing stripes.  Then there was a kid wearing a shirt with the Wheel of Fortune board on it, on which it was spelled out, "G_  F_CK  Y__RS_LF" and the text at the bottom, "Would you like to buy a vowel?"  Yes, a kid.  This happens elsewhere here, too; at the fall fair, you could hear loud disco songs being played that drop the f-bomb on every chorus.  Oh, German-speaking world.  It's not that they don't know, I think, but maybe just that it doesn't have the same impact?  Weird.  Anyhow.  It's fun working with these kids. 

I don't have any new pictures.  It's mostly white-gray and rainy outside.  (Weird how I only want to show you the city when it's pretty and sunny; I also manage not to take pictures of the ugly parts, like all the smokestacks right on the French/German border, from the pharmaceutical companies, or the refuse-burning station.  I'd say they mar the quaint skyline here.  Everyone tries to ignore them.  So now the secret is out.  Sorry for any bubble-bursting there.)  In other news, I found a pool close to school, and have been swimming a couple times.  It's pretty great.  I'm starting out conservatively so I don't end up with arms too sore to raise over my head (it's happened before). 

Hmm, wait, here's a food picture for you: this chard, carrot, tofu, ginger, garlic thing I put over delicious tiny noodles from the Asian grocery, with cilantro.