Around the world in eighty measures
San Francisco
I couldn’t believe how much I remembered from the San Francisco tour when I was writing this article. I remember being so angry that we weren’t seeing all of the artisanal toast joints that I had wanted to see, and being almost determined to be the most angsty, supercilious teenager in all of the Philharmonic Orchestra, not caring to retain a single memory, as a result. But I gave in because the thing is that these trips are filled with learning experiences that are so different from those that you might encounter in school that I couldn’t help but pay attention.
March 20: On our first day in the Bay Area, we performed at both Stanford University and San Francisco State University (SFSU). In the morning, we played Rossini’s “Barber of Seville” and the last movement of Sibelius’s Symphony No. 2 for the Stanford director of bands, followed by a two-hour clinic. It was interesting to learn that Sibelius grew up in Finland, which is a place known for being desolate and gloomy, and how he used Finland as a major inspiration for the piece. But I think I liked listening to the clinician unfold her memories of playing the same piece with a cute cello player when she was in high school just a little more.
3:00 p.m.: In the afternoon, we participated in a music exchange with students from the San Francisco School of the Arts orchestra at SFSU. After we played our two pieces, they played Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue.” Our clinician for the exchange was also really funny because he looked just like Jeff Goldblum. Of course, in reality his name was Cyrus Ginwla and he was a SFSU director of music and professor of conducting, but it was fun to imagine that he was a star of “Jurassic Park” or someone who makes frequent cameos in “Portlandia” episodes and Wes Anderson movies.
March 21: Today, we traveled through San Francisco. First we visited the California Academy of Sciences in Golden Gate Park where we saw a blind albino alligator named Claude, who was so frightening -- my god! He had raging ruby-colored eyes, and he had a lot of teeth that looked very sharp and dangerous. Then we went to a planetarium show narrated by Frances McDormand, who is an actress that I love and admire, and when she was done talking, one of the men who works at the museum started to give a presentation on the city’s lack of porpoises in the SF bay, and tried to get us to download his app to save the porpoises.
3:00 p.m.: That night we saw a great performance from the San Francisco Symphony. They played Handel’s “Water Music Suite No. 1 in F Major,” which had a delightful harpsichord interlude, as well as Haydn’s “Trumpet Concerto,” which was fun because I was playing that piece with the Wind Ensemble too, and Haydn’s “Symphony No. 98 in B-flat Major,” which was also great because Haydn is an all-around golden composer. What was interesting though, was that the soloist for the trumpet concerto -- Mark Inouye -- had a jazz background and during intermission he did another improvised jazz solo with the principal bass player. It was really cool and unexpected, but also felt kind of fake and like “look at how cool and spontaneous I am.”
I’m not going to say that this trip was life-altering, because it wasn’t. And even though we were in parts of the Bay Area that are often very touristy and not the kinds of places that I have heard about on “This American Life,” or talked about with friends, or read about in Dave Eggers’ literature, I still had a lot of fun, and was really content with being able to spend time with a group of musicians that I like and respect.
New York City
Over Spring Break, I had the honor of going to New York City with our school’s Wind Ensemble. It was my first time in Manhattan and was easily one of the most rewarding experiences of my life so far. Each day got more amazing, culminating with the most amazing concert that I’ve ever performed in.
March 30: One of our first outings was to Rockefeller Center, the iconic National Broadcasting Company (NBC) headquarters. We waited in line in a stuffy room full of many people just to get to the elevator. Just off the elevator, we passed through a room with motion-sensitive lights on the walls floor and ceiling and eventually reached the look-out at the top of the observatory. As someone who grew up in Los Angeles, I thought I knew what a big city looked like — but New York dwarfed all my expectations. You could see all of New York with one quick 360 degree turn. Some of us were goofing around and posing for pictures by the edge and nearly fell off.
March 31: We were also lucky enough to see a Broadway showing of “The Phantom of the Opera”. Besides the person sitting next to me who was hating on it, everyone seemed to fall in love with this musical. For years I had to listen to my dad screech “Music of the Night” through our house, so hearing a real singer perform it for the first time was very refreshing. Whether it was because of the pit orchestra, the singing, or (according to the girls behind me) the sex appeal of the phantom, all of the tunes from the musical were stuck in our heads for the rest of the trip.
April 1: The following day, we got to see the Statue of Liberty on a private boat cruise on the Hudson River. We, along with two other school musical ensembles, were provided dinner and a funky dance floor that even our band director had to get down with. John Adams Middle School music teacher and chaperone, Ms. Woo, got a great video of music director Kevin McKeown’s dancing, and all of the students took selfies with him. There were also great photo opportunities with various regions of the city and with the Statue of Liberty, but our teacher’s dancing completely upstaged that.
April 2: Then, the final night came. It was the moment that all of us band kids had been waiting for since the beginning of the year. We were going to perform at Carnegie Hall. It really hit us when we all had our instruments out in the warm-up room. There was a collective feeling of excitement that no one could get rid of. As soon as we stepped on the stage, we knew that all our work had paid off. As great a view as the top of the Rockefeller Center was, nothing compared to looking out from the stage of Carnegie Hall. When we played, the acoustics of the hall made our sound beautifully ring for seconds after we played. And when it was all over, all most of us could say was “Wow”.
Europe
April 10: As we enter the famous Notre-Dame cathedral, the history of the 13th century building seeps in through the stained glass windows, assuring us that something special is about to take place. As we step into the heart of the cathedral and look out into an audience numbered well into the hundreds, our feet become slightly colder, our heart rates slightly faster, and our eagerness to show this foreign country what we’ve been working on back home slightly more apparent. Our conductor steps in front of us, and we are swept away in a sea of repertoire made up of Palestrina, Byrd, Pachelbel, Sweelinck, Lotti, Whitacre and other legendary composers. Not many 17-year-olds can say that they’ve had an experience quite like this with their high school choir; however, being a lucky member of the Samohi Choir program, I was able to be a part of the 2015 European tour in which the Madrigals and Chamber ensembles traveled across the Netherlands, Belgium and France, performing each step of the way.
April 5: On Sunday, we drove into Amsterdam and went to the Anne Frank house, where the Frank family stayed in hiding from the Nazi regime for two years starting in 1942. The house was still standing and was converted into half-walking tour and half-museum. As we walked up the extremely narrow stairs and passed through the actual bookshelf that doubled as a door to the secret annex, there was an overall feeling of disbelief that we were actually walking on the same ground as the Frank family. The history of the house made the trip an emotionally-taxing experience for all, but we agreed that it was important that we went and paid our dues. Later, when we were taking a walking tour of Amsterdam, our tour guide informed us that the name of every Jewish citizen killed in the Holocaust was painted on the bricks that lined the ground of the town spread out throughout the city.
April 6: On Monday night, we had our first full-length concert in the town of Kapelle. Our audience consisted mostly of older people who attended the church on a regular basis. This concert specifically stuck out in my head because we had an intermission halfway through the concert where we were able to converse with audience members over tea and coffee that the church provided for us. I loved being able to talk to the locals of this town about their everyday lives and discuss our life back in Santa Monica with them. One woman I talked to was actually a music teacher at a local high school, and enjoyed discussing our repertoire and how it differed from the music her student choir was currently working on. This small interaction worked as reassurance to a fact that I will always stand by: music is the universal language.
April 10: Later Friday night, we had a dinner on the Seine river and following that, took a Seine river cruise. The night lights of Paris made for an illuminated sight seeing tour. However, after exiting the boat, our night was far from over. Our chaperones and Mr. Huls surprised us by taking us to the top of the Eiffel Tower. (Well, the middle level; the top was closed by the time we got there.) With the wind off the Seine making me wish I had brought another sweater, we loaded into the elevator and were lifted into the infamous structure. The view of Paris from above was overwhelming, and proved to be a perfect background for three Samo promposals!
April 12: With a melancholy fatigue blanketing all of us, we loaded into the coaches Sunday morning and were off to the airport. The European tour proved to be everything it was built up to be, something that rarely happens. This trip is a memory that will forever be a defining factor of my time at Samo, and I think I speak for all students that were on the trip when I say that I am more than grateful for this opportunity, and the incredible experiences it held.