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!