Thursday, January 01, 2015
Happy New Year to all from us in Fresno, California. I no longer take this for granted as I sit at home writing to you, for my wife and I have just returned from Kiev, Ukraine, where I have overseen the recording of six of my orchestral works, including the Concerto for Violin and Orchestra and a brand-new work, Rhapsody for Oboe and Orchestra (Kiev 2014). Please read more about the project at http://kievorchestralmusicrecording.mydagsite.com/.
Theodore Kuchar, director of the Fresno Philharmonic, directed the National Symphony Orchestra of Ukraine and James Buswell, from New England Conservatory, joined him and the orchestra to record the Violin Concerto, while Rong-Huey Liu, first oboist of the Fresno Phil, did a magnificent recording with them of Kiev 2014.
For our composer friends at least, I have been tempted to create a guide for projects such as these that I tentatively call Kiev in 500 Easy Steps. Such steps include learning to count higher than four in Ukrainian so you don’t say something like “dva before seventeen,” which brought down the house when I wanted to ascertain where we were in a certain score! But, for now, let’s thank the Lord that we recorded the entire CD in 20 hours as we had planned, that we had a marvelous and safe time in Kiev, right on the Maidan where all the protests and riots have taken place, and that we had safe travel there and back.
Oh, can’t resist one more story now: on the way back, while we were in the Kiev airport very early on Monday, December 22nd, it became clear that the entire AirFrance computer system was down. So they were handwriting boarding passes and luggage tickets for about 300 people! We finally got through security to the gates and went to our own gate where we awaited our seat assignments. The same harried flight attendants who had handwritten the boarding passes came hurriedly to the gate – and checked everyone else onto the plane first, even though we were first in line to get our seats. American missionaries to Kiev next to us started joking about us being on “business class,” and I thought that was too good to pass up! As it turns out, they were prophetic, and we did end up in business class for the three-hour flight to Paris! Daphne’s luggage didn’t fare so well; it went missing in Salt Lake City at customs. A week later, right after I filed the lost baggage claim, and right when the Fresno baggage attendant said it would, the bag showed up on our front porch. I wish it would share its travels with us; that would be a fine blog, indeed!