Cartagena International Music Festival - day 2
Firstly, I must apologize for this post coming so late - if any of you have been following our Tweets or indeed our Posterous promises of many blog updates beginning at the very start of January, you may have been expecting this introductory blog all week! In my defence, we spent two days travelling, then had some technical wifi issues in our Cartagena hotel/rehearsal space, and well, since then, have just been incredibly busy (and having some fun too!).
So to catch you up, the story so far is that we left London very early on Monday morning. All the musicians arrived on time and there were no dramas with the cellos or bass, so all in all, a wonderful start to the tour! We flew direct to Miami, and arrived late Monday afternoon to a hot and sunny Florida evening. That night, a group squeezed into a mini bus (I'm sure we were at least two people over capacity...) which took us to South Beach. A few mojitos on the beach later, the very tired group piled back into the mini bus back to the hotel.
Tuesday morning we were back to Miami airport for our flight to Cartagena. Already in the airport queue everyone around us was speaking Spanish and I, for one, quickly realised that my Michel Thomas crash course in beginner Spanish CDs probably weren't going to get me very far in Colombia...
Arriving in Cartagena on Tuesday evening, we walked out of the plane to incredible heat - around 32 degrees - and beautiful scenery and people, and for us first timers, it hit us how special this tour was going to be.
Wednesday and Thursday have been packed days of rehearsals. The management team have been sorting out various inevitable teething problems with music, schedules, lighting, chairs, etc. And the musicians have been working incredibly hard and are making an absolutely beautiful sound. There have been many happy reunions of our players with the professional Colombian musicians they have worked with in past years, who are desk sharing with CLS musicians. We've met some of the soloists, who sound incredible, and have been soaking up the friendly, enthusiastic, massively positive atmosphere that surrounds the Cartagena International Music Festival.
We often talk of the 'CLS Family' which is in essence, I suppose, a feeling which surrounds the orchestra, from the players, to the management, to the board and especially our audiences. Well, here in Cartagena, the CLS family is part of a much larger family which includes musicians and the hugely dedicated staff from all around Colombia. What an honour it is to be part of this festival and I look forward to sharing with you all of our ups and downs over the coming week and a bit! I promise some good pictures too, to bring a little bit of sunny Cartagena to London in the winter.
Our first concert is tomorrow evening and we're up bright and early for a dress rehearsal in the theatre, so I'd better get some sleep!
-Gillian
