Last day of Hot Springs Music Festival

I just heard back on my car. I'm not sure all the details, but basically the verdict is my car is undriveable more than 15 feet at the moment. From what I understand, it overheated, leaking water and motor fluid (you guys can correct me if I'm naming the wrong things), which did something to one of the cylinders. Not quite sure yet if it is worth replacing yet or not, it will depend on what all in there needs to be replaced or not. I'm kicking myself becuase all this is something that could have been prevented days ago. Not just that, but could have prevented even if I didn't drive home the night it broke down on the road. Again, life lesson: check your gauges regularly!! (and take it immediately if it's making funky sounds. That too.)
So Dad is driving up with a flatbed trailer to pull it home, since they can't fix it in time for when we need to leave.

Dang it!!

Anyway, today is the last day of the festival. I'm kinda sad...it went by too quickly. All the concerts were good, but I'm not sure yet if I'm going to get any cd's...if I do it will be of the Potpourri concert, the one where the apprentices bring their own music and put together chamber pieces themselves and then audition them in to play in the concert. I didn't play in it this year. There was a quartet arrangement of some pieces from the opera Carmen that my mentor brought, but we could never get it together in time. I also got to play Hans Strauss's Nocturne for french horn and piano that my friend Doug the tuba player brought to try out on tuba and harp. It was really cool, and really pretty, and we got to discuss different ways of rearranging it with both our mentors.

The opera theatre production of Carmen was sooooo good. It was adapted from the original to a much smaller chamber orchestra, down to only the main cast (no chorus), and ran without intermission for a total of 1 hour and 20 min, roughly. And it was transcribed to english. If you know anything about Bizet's Carmen, there was no fluff in this one...just the nitty-gritty emotional story that is Carmen. It was really intense, and so good! The singers were absolutely fantastic...and the set was built by my mentor's husband (who runs all the setup stuff at the festival) on very little budget and mostly stuff laying around....and it looked so good! The stage was set up like an arena, bales of hay outlined a small circular stage on the feildhouse floor.

So, I'm officially done playing harp. I don't play on tonight's orchestra concert, but I do get to play with the percussion section. Yep you read right. It is a piece that allows anyone to participate in. So there are a lot of us, who aren't playing on the piece, that are doing various percussion instruments as a group...and you don't really have to read the music either, you just watch and do you're rhythm. There is some african drums, tom-toms, clave (which is hard wooden sticks banging together), whistles, cowbell, and clapping hands. I get to play the maracas. WOOHOOO!! It's really fun.

Here are some pics from the festival. This first one is of that fried banana cheesecake thing I told you about. It was sooooo good....

This is a brass quintet jamming songs from West side story at the Brauhouse patio:Here is a pic of a fountain walking along the sidewalk, and of the Quapaw bath and spa, one of the historic bathhouses on bathhouse row (now remodeled and working) here in historic district of Hot Springs:

Oh, and Stephanie, just so you know I met you're stunt double.......:o)