urs, but not as wide. Plus, they aren't air-conditioned, and if you think our pianos at App are bad, theirs are horribly out of tune. Ick. Warmed up and rehearsed in the hot stickiness while Alisha took pictures. Hiked back to the rehearsal room, sat and listened to the last few groups, the went to lunch!Lunch today was in what looked like a very fancy room, but for all I knew, it might not have been. Everything was red and trimmed with gold. They brought out a bunch of food as usual. I sat next to Daniel who was hyped up something awful on caffeine; it was fun to listen to his stories pour out so enthusiastically.
After lunch we headed back to the hotel to grab our concert clothes. Went to Shanghai Concert Hall - we had to make a couple of circles around it before we got in the right lane to turn - which isn't too bug or too little. The stage is pretty deep. We found our dressing rooms downstairs, which look like every large American dressing room, complete with flourescent lights. They hadn't set the stage yet, so we had time to sit around and take pictures. Chris gave my shoulders a kiatzu (spelling) massage, which worked wonders on my knots. Of course, they're all back now, but it felt good then!
The Fudan students arrived en masse and we assembled. (I don't know why I just chose to use that word. Assembled?) The plan was to run the program in order. The joint orchestra opens with the 2 countries' national anthems, then ASU chamber music, then their wind ensemble, then their chamber music, then joint orchestras again. Yeah. Loooooong. Dr. A ended up cutting the DMO cello piece. Grieg opened and Hunt (my quartet!) closed that section. It was interesting to listen to the crowd during the chamber groups (to certain groups in particular) - whenever there was a particularly out of tune note, everyone (mostly Fudan) would make a sound of slight pain, which made me chuckle. After I grimaced, of course. :-/ The point of this is that this rehearsal was incredibly long. After my group played, we had a long while before the orchestra portion. Several of us went into the lobby, which was very tall with a large, pink marble staircase. The wind ensemble played only movie music - The Lion King, Phantom of the Opera, The Incredibles, Sound of Music and Back to the Future. Also, their string quartets were realllllllly good. So, yes. As we were waiting, the time kept creeping along - we were supposed to eat at 5:30 but at 5:20 we were nowhere near finished. (I wrote this paragraph on a bus, so imagine really sloppy handwriting.) So, about 5:40, we learn that we won't be playing again before the concert. Well dang, we waited for close to 3 hours. Oh well, no harm done.
Went downstairs about 6:00 for dinner...which was KFC. I honestly cannot remember a time that I've eaten KFC before this trip, but it was actually quite tasty. Though I've been told Chinese KFC vs. American KFC is quite different. I had a sandwich. Mmmmm. Changed clothes. Most of the girls had long, black, very similar dresses. Some had knee-length skirts. I noted that none of them were wearing pants, and all of us were, except Lindsay. Elizabeth just told me that one person asked her if "we always wear trousers?" E explained that it's hard to find long, nice black skirts in the states. *Side note: journaling takes a lot of perseverance! When I wrote this it was a week later on Sunday. Slowly but surely.* Oh, and this was the day my feet hurt like no other. I switched shoes and didn't wear my Chacos, so I'm pretty sure that's the cause. But man, sometimes I felt like my feet were going to split in half.
Moving on. We all (Fudan and App) gathered backstage. All the App students were expecting to go on about 7:15, since the concert started at 7:30. At 7:25, they still weren't letting us on, so I asked Hower if they normally do it like that (just going on when it's time for the first piece, instead of warming up). I don't really remember what he said, just that it didn't answer the question. Later Dr. A said it's a European thing. Oh.
Anyway, turns out they have MC's for their concerts! Well, more like just a pretty girl that welcomes the audience and introduces groups. The US national anthem was first, but Dr. A gave a speech with David translating. The first thing he says is (pronounced) "Nee-how!" which is Chinese for hello. And everyone starts clapping. :-) A few more touching words about how music unites us and off we went. Conductor Li did the Chinese anthem.
Next was chamber music, which I'm pretty sure everyone rocked. I messed up my "solo" a tiny bit, but I'm sure no one really cared. It was still awesome. After that, some people went downstairs, some stayed up, some took naps - we had a long wait. They told us afterwards that we set a record for the longest concert in that hall. Three hours. No joke. The hall was noticeably more empty went the orchs came back on for the last part. We played 3 Bizet pieces, Coppelia waltz, and Happy News, a Chinese piece that Dr. A conducted and was super exciting. Another thing they like to do here is give out flowers. All directors got an enormous bouquet, plus the two concertmasters. Neato.
We came back to the hotel and decided to go up to their "Midnight Bar" or something like that - a bar on the very top of the 26-story hotel. We couldn't really see much because it was foggy and rainy, but it was still nice to relax and enjoy each other's company. After we were done there we went to the little c-store across the street (different from the afore mentioned one) and got some more 30-cent ice cream. Yummm. Hung out in David's room then went to bed. Woohoo!
More pictures to come soon on this post. My internet is being silly.
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