I had the most amazing week last week on tour with the music centre I'm involved in in Leicester. We went across Germany performing in concerts with our symphony orchestra, big band, choir and vocal groups.
After a 16 odd hour journey ont he coach we arrived at Bacharach first in a lovely hostel overlooking the river Rhine, some beautiful views. We performed a concert in the hostel courtyard, which was rained off half way through, and also visited the surrounding areas including the town itself. We had some real great nights in the bar also, one video of which is shortly to be uploaded to YouTube (link to follow!).
Next, we spent a day in Mainz to perform at their summer festival (which is being headlined by Simply Red would you know!) but were treated to a tour of the city and lunch at city hall. We saw the Gutenberg press, where the first ever printing was done (of The Bible nonetheless) and visited the cathedral which was quite nice but didn't really have a spot on Lincoln cathedral! Preceeding us was some sort of clown who demanded that he have the whole stage for his performance, forcing us to clear the stage of everything after rehearsal just to fill it up again for our performance (pictured above)! This, added to the slow techies, gave me reason to reconsider whether German efficiency is really true...
On from there we visited Wolfspark Werner Freund which is a park with wolves in, as you can guess. The interesteing thing was the insane park warden, Werner, who had raised each wolf from a puppie and made himself into a super-alpha male in each group. He kissed, licked and lay with al the wolves and howled to the other wolves across the park. It was very interesting and more than a bit creepy...
Our next hostel was in Dreisbach, same kind of hostel but without the amazing view. Still some great nights in the bar anyway and it also gave us a nice trip to the nearby Saarburg (pictured) which was very nice (if a bit expensive!) in which our team for the week made our winning treasure hunt (maybe...?!). On the last day we performed at the Cloef Atrium near the loop in the Saar (below), which was a great day and performance, a real good end to the week (especially with the free bratwurst and beer!).
All in all, the week was awesome (and i try not to use that word too often). Great nights, beautiful places and views, tis great to perform music anyway and especially with a big group of some of my closest friends.
Music is such an amazing thing, it can give emotional extremes, it can give hobbies, playing and listening, it can be used for almost anything but most of all it brings people together from all backgrounds, ages and races. It's never too late to get into music; SVMC's motto is music for everyone, there are 6 year olds all the way up to 80 year olds there. Do it now.
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