A Fond Farewell

It is hard to say goodbye to the NZSO. I feel like I learned so much more through this experience than I would have if I had been in school this month. Not that going to school isn't a valuable experience, but going out there and trying to apply the lessons I've heard all these years has helped certain things click. And being cast out into a foreign city has certainly kept me on my toes.

Last weekend I rode the Wellington cable car all the way to the top and walked down into the city through the botanical gardens. Since I was actually standing in the spot where most of the Wellington postcards are photographed, I decided to take a similar picture. I wish the cable car had been a little less camera-shy though.

There is an observatory up at the top of the hill with a neat human sundial. A map on the ground has the dates of the year on it. If you stand on the date and raise your arms, you point to the time!

In the middle of the "bush" (the woods) there was a whole field of hydrangeas. I thought of Mom and her attempts to plant hydrangeas at our house in Texas. While it was a noble attempt, they seem to do a little bit better in New Zealand.

I will miss all of New Zealand's ferns. They made me feel like I was in Jurassic Park.

I am still kind of overwhelmed that I stumbled upon the opportunity to visit this awesome place--it won't soon be forgotten. But life, friends, and family are calling me back to the US, and I'll look forward to being--and feeling--at home.

Tour: North Island

This week the NZSO traveled up the North Island, starting with a flight into Napier. Like Christchurch, Napier suffered a massive earthquake, and since it happened in the 1930s, the whole city was rebuilt in an art deco style.

The architecture, the palm trees, and the small businesses made me think of seaside resort towns in Florida. In a way, I've felt more at home in Napier than in any other place I've been in NZ so far.

This is the theater where we performed. It was technically the "worst" hall that we've performed in, acoustically, and on the inside it very much resembles a high school auditorium. There was even an art deco backdrop on stage, made out of a thin piece of wood painted to look like an old-timey Hollywood design, instead of sound shells. Isn't it cute, though?

Thinking of Florida and walking along the beautiful beach from our hotel, I thought it might be nice to swim. As it would turn out, though, this ocean in Napier has too strong of an undertow for people to get in. 

From Napier we had a six-hour bus ride north to Hamilton. Along the way we stopped at Lake Taupo, which is a crater lake thought to have been created by a supervolcanic eruption. There are still a few active volcanoes in the area, too! I liked being in Lake Taupo and seeing businesses called "Great Lake" this and "Great Lake" that. It's a sizable lake, certainly, but compared to Lake Michigan it's actually not that big of a deal. For example, I could see to the other side.

I had really been looking forward to Hamilton because everyone went out of their way to tell me how ugly and low-class it was. The problem is that Kiwis clearly have different standards for ugliness and classiness than Americans do--I think something was lost in translation. While many of the musicians were counting down the minutes until they could check out of the hotel, I was actually enjoying a walk around the town. Here's a scene from crummy Hamilton:

The last leg of the North Island tour, which was reached by a nice quick bus ride, was Auckland. I love Auckland, and I'm glad I had the chance to have spent a day here. It's the largest city in New Zealand, and it might be the only city in NZ you've ever heard of. Probably due to its size, the downtown is spread out, so it's not as easy to explore as Wellington. 

With its sky tower, Auckland looks to me like it could be a city in Asia. The shopping mall beneath our posh hotel is also Asian-style. The food court menus are all in Chinese, Japanese, and Korean, and the stores are laid out exactly like they would be in Beijing. I started to get nostalgic for my travels to China six years ago while walking around there.

Our concert was performed in the Auckland Town Hall, which is a beautiful European-style space, with the orchestra seated in tiers. The orchestra was clearly happy to be playing there, and the performance sounded so nice.

Just one more day here in New Zealand! We still need to perform this program in Wellington, the orchestra's hometown. I think it will be a fun one, since it concludes a long trip and brings us back to a familiar space.

Tour: South Island

Greetings from the South Island! Yesterday we played a concert in Dunedin, which is officially (by far) the southermost city I've ever been. Dunedin is a college town with a cute city center in the shape of an octagon. Awesomely enough, the city center is called "The Octagon". While NZ is a fairly new country in terms of human habitation, Dunedin does actually have some historic buildings, like the town hall:

I'm finding that town halls are important places in NZ. They're always located in prominent spots at the city center, and according to musicians from the orchestra, they are also the best performance spaces. Usually the NZSO plays at the Dunedin town hall, but construction kept us away from it this time. Instead we performed in an old vaudeville-style theater with exceptionally dry acoustics. I've played plenty of concerts in dry venues (like, for example, every concert I've ever played at a high school auditorium), but it was a new and kind of humorous experience hearing a full symphony attempt to sound lush and romantic in that space.

Today we traveled to Christchurch, which was almost wiped out by a series of massive earthquakes in 2010 and 2011. The musicians told me that before the earthquakes happened, no one even knew that there was a fault under Christchurch, as there hadn't been seismic activity there for thousands of years. The first earthquake weakened the structures of the buildings downtown, but they didn't realize it until the second earthquake knocked everything down, killing people in the process. I had a full course of mixed emotions while walking around downtown. My friend Todd, a bassoonist, lives in Christchurch, so I had him tell me what it was like to live through it. As a Kiwi, he was good-natured and optimistic about the whole situation.

Most of the multi-story buildings in Christchurch collapsed in the earthquake. Now all that is left are short buildings or the bottom few floors of the tall buildings.

The main cathedral in Christchurch did not survive. The organ was damaged in the first earthquake, and the spire and parts of the walls collapsed in the second earthquake. The facade with the rose window was lost to an aftershock. This is the cathedral that you see on souvenirs and travel logs from Christchurch--it is a huge monument for the city to lose.

All that is left from the opera house are the facade and the stage. No one is allowed to access the space, much less perform there, anymore.

The NZSO used to perform at the town hall in Christchurch, too. While it withstood the earthquake pretty well, part of the building sank toward the river, so people have been told to keep out, and the lawn has been allowed to grow over.

 

Because the government and office buildings downtown were almost all destroyed, the city government and the relief effort were moved to the art gallery. Apparently it hasn't been used as an art gallery since then, and it was almost brand new at the time of the earthquakes.

Once the main shopping strip was cleared of rubble, they built a makeshift downtown out of shipping containers. Known as the Restart Mall, this area is one of the hippest places I've been in a while. Even though it was a chilly day, there were crowds of people at the food carts, coffee shops, and clothing stores. One of the stores at the mall was a grocer specializing in imported foods, and I had a good laugh seeing that they had such exotic foods as M&Ms, Pop Tarts, and Capri Sun.

With all of the concert venues in Christchurch out of commission, the orchestra performs at a sports arena. Most of the arena itself is curtained off, and sound shells are added behind the group to develop a surprisingly nice acoustic. The audience seemed appreciative, although they were a little perturbed that the cello soloist showed up in jeans (he had left his performance clothes at the hotel...at least we in the orchestra thought it was funny!).

Views from Wellington

The orchestra's tour of New Zealand starts tomorrow, so my time left in Wellington is limited. Here are some of my recent views as I wrap up my explorations of this city.

My Kodak didn't like the lighting in the concert hall, apparently, but there's the view from my chair in the orchestra. It's unusual to have some go-getters warming up in the string section--usually the woodwinds are the first to arrive and the last to leave. 

This shot looks southward from the Mount Victoria lookout, above the center city. If we flew in that direction, our next stop would be Antarctica. 

And this is the city as seen from the Mount Victoria lookout.

When I zoomed in, I was actually able to take a picture of the building where I'm staying. It's further back in the left side of the picture, near the highway, and it looks sort of like it has dark grey and white vertical stripes.

Here's the view from the apartment balcony, right in the middle of it all!

I took this picture looking toward central Wellington from the "bottom" of Mount Victoria. Even on the ground, the streets are steep. It's not a great town for cyclists.

Our program for the tour will feature Dvorak's Cello Concerto and Rachmaninoff's Symphonic Dances. Let's hope I ace it all six times. And if not, I still get a trip around NZ out of it, so I suppose this is a win-win situation!

Lord of the Rings sites

It was almost inevitable--I went on a Lord of the Rings tour yesterday! A guide named Craig drove a big van full of diehards and newbies to see some of the trilogy's filming locations around Wellington. And yes (this is New Zealand, isn't it?), there was a break for afternoon tea.

The first location we visited was a trail on Mount Victoria, which bumps right up against the city center and might be one of the most popular local trails for a run or a walk. This spot was used for one of the earliest scenes of the trilogy, when the hobbits first venture out from the Shire. They flee a corn field and end up stumbling down a hill.  Look! The trees are the same!

At the bottom of the hill, the hobbits hear the shriek of the Ringwraiths for the first time. The Ringwraiths are villianous ghost kings, so the hobbits need to hide from them. If you look at my picture of the setting, you can see the U-shaped tree from the background of the scene. But the tree that they hid under in the movie was just a prop! Like most of the props built for the movie, it was made out of foam, and it was made huge so that four normal-sized men could sit under it and appear to be hobbit-sized.

Next we visited the road to Isengard. Gandalf first visits Isengard to consult with his then-buddy Saruman, who lives there in a tall, craggy tower. This scene was actually filmed at a frisbee golf course in suburban Wellington, and you can see that it looks pretty innocuous today. Peter Jackson was told to return all his sets to their pre-filming state after shooting was finished, so the little road that they built was torn up and taken away, and the grass was reseeded. As for that excellent medieval-looking archway, it's actually a tiny model filmed so that it looks life-size.

Here we are: Gandalf, and Saruman, and me, all hanging out on the same frisbee golf course.

A couple of battle scenes were filmed at a quarry. The sets for this scene (from the third movie, at Minas Tirith) were actually built out of foam into the quarry. 

Rivendell is where the elves live. It is by far the most beautiful place in Middle Earth. On real Earth, Rivendell is a regional park called Kaitoke, and it doesn't have soft lighting or waterfalls splashing over canyons. Those were all special effects.

When the movie was being filmed, full-size sets were built in the woods here. It is a very lovely picnic spot nowadays.

The regional park is ideal for camping and hiking. Our tour group had fun walking one of the swing bridges across the river.

The water there is crystal clear, and since it's Easter weekend, there were families all around taking advantage of the great swimming holes.

I enjoyed all the movie trivia, but I'm also thankful for the opportunity to see another beautiful corner of the globe!

Kiwi encounter

Having been told that I would never see a kiwi in the wild, I went to the Wellington Zoo yesterday to ensure that I would encounter these handsome creatures. Kiwis are nocturnal, so they are kept in a special "twilight" enclosure, which is completely dark except some eerie red lights. I managed to see the kiwis foraging for insects and bouncing around in the enclosure like wallabies, although it was apparent that they were sensitive to the noise of crying babies. Then I watched a zookeeper feeding Tahi, a kiwi who had lost one leg in a varmint trap at the edge of a farm. My camera performed even worse in the twilight than my eyes did:

But here's what a kiwi actually looks like:

This has to be one of the cutest animals ever! Kiwi feathers don't interlock like most bird feathers do, so they're actually kind of furry! Adorably, they have whiskers like cats so they can feel around at night. Also, their nostrils are all the way at the end of their beak, which is highly unusual for a bird. The zookeeper said that bird beak length is usually measured from the nostrils to the tip of the beak, so technically kiwis have the shortest beaks in the world. And they have incredibly tiny, basically vestigial, wings that we can't really see when we look at them.

After I saw the kiwis, I went to as many animal talks as I could. I ended up seeing the zookeepers feed and check up on the kakas (local parrots, which are mostly dark brown), the Sumatran tigers, the sun bears, and the Australian pelican. The sun bears were really fun:

I also got to see the vets doing surgery on a bird's feet. The Wellington Zoo has a great bird breeding and rehab program, which makes sense because NZ was once an island where birds were the only wildlife. 

For today's cuisine I have chosen some candy:

When I was at a cafe earlier this week, I saw that they had a gelato flavor called "hokey pokey". I had no idea what that could be, so when I saw a bag of hokey pokey at the convenience store, I had to get it. I think it's supposed to be a NZ thing, but it is almost identical to a confection from Western New York: sponge candy. This candy is basically a super-light, airy toffee (almost like a crunchy cotton candy), covered in chocolate. It tastes a little bit buttery and melts in your mouth. While it shares some similarities with malt balls, it is a thousand times more appealing than malt balls. Yet another thumbs up to the Kiwis.

First-Time Tramper

Today I adventured beyond the city center of Wellington for the first time. In New Zealand, the word "tramping" refers to hiking, and Kiwis seem to really enjoy tramping around! So I had to try it for myself. My guide for the day was Mike, a fellow American and the English horn player for the NZSO. We took just about every scenic route possible. Or maybe every route here is scenic?

The Wellington area is surrounded by rocky bays. The beaches have large, smooth stones instead of sand, and the water is very calm, even with the tides going in and out.

Amongst the rocks are hundreds of little tide pools. The ones that we explored housed all sorts of great marine flora, plus anemones and starfish.

We embarked on a proper walk at Makara. The beach there had an attractive assortment of driftwood and rock formations.

It was a pretty strenuous and steep hike up the mountain, but the views were almost otherworldly. The side of the mountain was so steep that it felt a little bit like being on the edge of a cliff. But the air was fresh and cool, and we could see all the way across the strait to the South Island.

To get to the top of the mountain we had to walk through a sheep farm. There were even some stair steps that had been built into the perimeter of the pasture for hikers to continue on their path. How strange is it that sheep can easily navigate the harsh terrain of mountain sides, but they don't know how to walk up and down the stairs to escape their life on the farm?

Reaching the top of the mountain was rewarding in itself, but we were also able to explore some WWII gun encampments up there. Even though NZ was never actually invaded during the war, the military kept soldiers on the lookout. The massive guns were mounted to the concrete supports in the middle of each encampment.

I have a lovely little sunburn now. I'm going to get some sunscreen from the drugstore ASAP--apparently the ozone layer over NZ is really messed up, and the sun burns extra bright here. What a landscape, though.