22 January, 2010

Kicking back into gear with the Tehran Symphony Orchestra

I do realize that I said I would keep blogging after Israel and then I clearly didn't.  This makes me somewhat less-than-true to my word, which is kind of disappointing, isn't it?  However, I'm here now to say that, even if it took me a while, I'm back and I'm going on another adventure!  When I got a last-minute call to go on tour with the Tehran Symphony Orchestra, I realized this was the perfect chance to get back to my blog.  There are already several people on facebook wanting to know more details, and I have no doubt there will be many stories soon to come.  Before I dig into that, let me catch up a bit.

Now that I'm an Israel Harp Competition veteran and I've graduated from school, I find my life going through a definite transition.  This is the beginning of full-time professional life.  I absolutely refuse to prepare another competition - I want to move on to other pursuits and restructure my life, but I'm distraught by the lack of direction in the meantime.  I've been so used to the rhythm of preparing the next big test or competition that I'm not sure how best to operate without that driving force providing purpose to my work.  I need a different driving force.  So, I've been back at the drawing board, re-questioning every little thing about my life.  What music do I really want to be playing and in what setting?  I want to spend less time practicing for a while and develop other areas of my life, but what should those be?

I'm even back to questioning where I should live.  I went home to the States over the holidays.  I saw a very good friend from college get married in New Haven, and then I went back to Chicago. It was such a wonderful thing to be with my family, comfortable to a degree that I never am anywhere else.  It snowed almost every day!  Dad was out on the driveway with the snow-blower sometimes three or four times a day.  Our wood stove kept us blissfully unaware of how cold it was.  (After spending an evening curled up by our wood stove, you really understand what it means to be warm, and you will never again be able to feel truly warm anywhere else.)  Cousins and aunts and uncles were in and out of the house, and epic games of Speedy Scrabble, DDR, and Settlers of Catan were conducted over Mom's famous hot chocolate and wayyy too many Christmas cookies.

Sister April, setting off on her weekly paper route, in the snow.
 
 
Speedy scrabble, Daddy, and the wood stove


When I found myself suddenly back in Paris again, cold and jetlagged, I was hit with a powerful bout of homesickness and seriously began to wonder if it's time to move back to the States.  It would be a difficult decision, because Paris is an incredible place, and my whole life is here right now.  It is just so hard to be split between two different countries - it is so draining to go back and forth and change gears completely every time, and there seems to be no end to it in sight for me.

For now, I'm not making any radical decisions, and I'm back to busily running around Paris teaching my wonderful students, rehearsing duets with Marta, and attending concerts.  I'm fighting loneliness by trying to get more involved in community activities - I'm signing up for a French class through the Sorbonne and I've joined a book club at the American Library in Paris.  Otherwise, I'm just taking opportunities as they come.  The cool thing about Paris is that sometimes really crazy opportunities fall right out of the sky.  That's how I got this job playing a tour with the Tehran Symphony Orchestra (TSO).

I was rehearsing at Camac with Marta when we both got a very long texto from a certain Christophe, looking for a harpist available to go on this tour (a referral from a French harpist friend of ours).  Originally the plan was to go to Tehran on Tuesday (we received the request on Monday), rehearse, play a concert there, and then come back to Europe for the rest.  Marta has a heavy teaching schedule that would make it hard for her to be gone for three weeks on short notice, but she encouraged me to do it.  So, naively, I called Christophe back and said "Count me in!".  I then got passed on to a Mr. Armini, who is apparently the conductor of the orchestra (though I'm confused why he would have a French cell phone).  Upon further discussion of the details, it became clear that with an American passport recently stamped in Israel, there was no way they were going to consider taking me to Iran with them.  Thus, I lost the job, and Marta took a deep breath and decided to take it instead, since she just happens to have a Polish passport.  Later that day, after furious amounts of rescheduling her life in order to be ready to be gone the next day, she found out that they had decided to cancel the Tehran leg of the trip, because it was just too complicated to organize visas for the Europeans.  (Why wasn't this planned a little bit further ahead of time?)  Thus, I could do the tour after all and she wouldn't have to abandon her students, so I got the job back.

I wish I could tell you more details, but it's been like pulling teeth just to get them to tell us critical pieces of information, such as when and how we're supposed to meet up with the orchestra to start the tour.  Here is the picture I've managed to piece together so far:

The TSO is coming to perform in six major cities in Europe.  Everybody in the orchestra is Iranian, but they were short a few instruments, so they have recruited six musicians from Paris - an oboe, horn, trumpet, trombone, and two harps.  Christophe, whom I had been in contact with first, is the trumpet player.  I will be playing second harp, and Marianne Eva Lecler will be playing first harp.  Fortunately, we will be provided with harps, so we do not have to deal with the inevitably maddening logistics of lugging harps around Europe.  I do not know what kind of harps they will be, nor what condition they will be in.  Our itinerary is as follows:
Jan 23rd: Strasbourg
Jan 25th: Brussels
Jan 27th: Rome
Jan 30th: Rotterdam
Jan 31st: Geneva
Feb 3rd: Vienna
I wish I could tell you what I will be playing, but they have not given us a program yet, much less our parts.  I'm not looking forward to sightreading a brand new score in the dress rehearsal before the first concert, but it looks like we'll have no choice.  They did say that it would consist of "Iranian traditional music," but while I would imagine that traditional music would only entail a small ensemble of traditional instruments, they seem to be bringing over a full-blown orchestra.  According to what I've managed to track down in the media, such as this article from the Tehran Times, the featured work to be performed  is the "Peace and Friendship Symphony" by composer Majid Entezami (originally the "Islamic Revolution Symphony" composed for the 30th anniversary of their revolution).  Does this remind anyone of our music history lessons about Russian national music?  I suspect that what I will be participating in is of great political significance.  I'm only minimally aware of what's going on in US-Iran international relations, so I'll be going with a relatively open mind and hoping to get a feel for the Iranian perspective.  My change of perspective will be greatly aided by the requirement that I wear a head scarf for the concerts.  I wonder what that's like.  Don't worry, I have promised to take pictures!

It's not very well-paid - 50 euros per day - but I suspect I will gain more from the experience than just money.  This is definitely a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for me.  If anything, it's woken me up and gotten my blood flowing again!  I'll keep you informed as well as I can.

Signing off for now...

1 comment:

DavidEGrayson said...

That's exciting news, Beth!

That'll be tough to move somewhere, especially if all your exciting gigs comes from a professional network you've built up in Paris. I guess you'd want to move someplace where you already have some good musical connections.

Greg is not well-positioned to do well in that speedy scrabble game :)