Gala Concert

Dear Ones,

I haven't had many Israeli adventures in the last month, mainly because I haven't been in Israel -- I spent most of the lusty month of May running around Scotland and England.  Twas a right kick to be back again -- lots of hard work, but also a surprising amount (even for me)  of 16-yr Lagavulin. Mmm.

I got back to Israel Sunday after an all-night flight and hit the ground running with 2 final rehearsals for a major gala concert (I'd missed nearly a month of practices!) and a talk at Tel Aviv University all by Wednesday.  Thank goodness this week is over.

While in Scotland I stayed in the country with my co-author and his family -- which includes a pony, two dogs, two gerbils, a feisty 7-yr old who doesn't like me building things with her legos but I do it anyway (I tell her I'm allowed to play with any toy I want because people with PhDs get to play with any toy they want, and that this is probably the best reason to get a PhD in the first place), and over 30 acres of gardens and sheeps and explosive rhododendrons.  I walked in the woods at least once a day -- here are a few pictures of one such stroll (though the rhododendrons weren't yet in bloom, one could just sense their latent energy).  Ah, Bonnie Scotland!

The gala concert on Wednesday night was a whole big to-do. The concept of gala concerts is, for me, one of the more bewildering and inexplicable features of civilized humanity. I don't understand why people ever, ever, ever ever ever agree to put on galas and then encourage people to pay to attend them.  Let alone in a country such as this one, where people are already inclined toward disarray, tardiness, argumentation, incessant talking, rambunctious disobedience to authority and truly remarkable levels of stubbornness.  I witnessed the outbreak of several -- several -- verbal barrages between women that nearly came to blows.  (The guys, for the most part, just hung out and talked on their phones...all during rehearsal.)  

We spent three hours on the day of the concert just practicing how to hold our folders between songs, how to transition from one location to another, etc., and by the end of it even those with papal temperaments were feeling stabby (stabby /sta•bee/ adjective, informal: feeling the need, desire or proclivity to stab proximate humans with such dull inanimate objects as may be readily obtained).  

Miraculously (and I don't use the word lightly) everything came together in concert with the orchestra and a packed house, and I think -- yes, I think that in the end, music may even have been made.   The Oratorio is comprised of 5 separate choirs, and the Chamber Choir (the one I'm in) got to sing two short pieces all by ourselves, inbetween Vivaldi's Magnificat and various Opera choruses performed by all 3000 Oratorio singers (well, closer to 200.  But it FELT like 3000).  

Someone videoed our pieces and posted them on you-tube (good ole youtube! I can still remember the day when, as a sophomore in college (!), I was first sent a link to a video on youtube. I believe the video was of a horse kicking a chicken onto the roof of a shed.  I thought to myself "What the heeeeelll?" and then "Hm.  This 'you tube' could be big...")

So, without further ado, the Chamber Choir performing Carissimi's "Plorate Filli Israel" followed by Nicolson's "O Pray for the Peace of Jerusalem" (DO, in fact, pray for the peace of this crazy, intense people).

Here's to a calmer week!