Erbil Concert

I'm just back from the music concert in Hewler. Beyond exhausted, but I know people get worried when I don't post...

I wish I could report that the concert was an unqualified success, but it was more like a qualified disaster. It was a good challenge, but circumstances played against us all day long.

Yesterday, I told the wind players we would have rehearsal at 1PM. I emphasized the extreme importance of this rehearsal, reminded them that they would all have to eat lunch early in order to get there, and asked them if this presented any problems. These exhortations were repeated in the smaller classes for each instrument. I trust my tanslator got it across-- he almost functions like an extension of me now. Even though he is not a musician, he has spent enough time with me to know what I am going to say and to help me explain. I've even caught him ghosting my conducting.

Anyway, 1PM rolled around. Zero players. I didn't get nervous quite yet. This is Kurdistan, and they are relaxed about schedules. 1:10, no one there. At 1:15 my clarinets, bless their hearts, showed up. And one flute. I caught Frand, the young trumpet player, in the hallway, and he told me he had thought the rehearsal was at 2-- and that's what he told Omar, who had gone off to the market. When I asked where the flutes were, they told me first that they some people didn't know when the rehearsal was, then that they were still eating lunch, then that some of them weren't going to performing at the concert that night! I finally nearly had my meltdown. The documentary cameras were rolling (an American crew has been following us around) and I actually told them to stop the cameras. It was REALLY frustrating-- it was our one chance at the stage (another rehearsal was scheduled there at 2) and there was a lot of stage managing to work out for people coming on and off for the singing. It wasn't until 1:35 that I could begin the rehearsal, and at that point there was only enough time for a quick dash through each piece and shouted directions about how the staging would work. I also told them that at the concert that evening, immediately after I played my solo they had to come backstage to have a warm-up rehearsal (we would have had a 20 minute window).

Well, you can imagine what happened. No one showed up for the warmup rehearsal until 15 minutes after they were supposed to. My grand plans for tuning, warmup, and touching up the messy flute and trumpet pieces fell apart. There was just enough time to play a tuning note when Boran burst into the room and told us we had to start immediately.

So I flung poor Frand and Omar on the stage (stage whispering one last plea "Dynamics!" in their ear as they went out. Predictably, Omar, who had never been on the stage, cracked a little under pressure and had a hard time getting through the piece. The clarinets rocked though. The Beethoven was pretty, and the audience actually started clapping when they played Old Joe Clark.

Dona Nobis Pacem was not all it could have been. The flutes fall apart the first time we play it every time, and this was no exception. We ended almost together. But as soon as they were done I had the whole group stand to sing it, and this went well. You could hear the audience hush so they could hear the melody and it came to a really nice volume as each group came in one by one. It perhaps wasn't the completely magical moment that I had envisioned, but it was definitely something that left an impression.

All day, before and after the concert, has been a constant flurry of demands for signatures, e-mail addresses, notes, photos etc. It was almost impossible even to walk down the hallway, everyone calling "teacher! teacher! Just one photo? Sign this please?" But these were some really hard goodbyes. How do you say "good-bye, good luck, and keep practicing" to someone who's heading back to Mosul, where they might slit her throat for having sheet music? Or bright, charming young Frand, headed back to Baghdad where one of our students was killed for her Western activities last year? I agree with what people have said-- we brought the students joy and exitement and love of art and this is worth a huge amount. But I want to imagine them heading back to normal lives, not this uncertain and edgy violence and fear and entrapment that so many of them seem to live in.

A reminder that even here in Erbil, all is not totally normal-- today at the hotel when I was in the lobby there was a loud bang from somewhere up the street. It was the kind of sound that in an American city would have made me raise my head for second and then go back to what I was doing. Car backfire or some other such city noise. But the doorman and the receptionist dashed towards the door and ran outside to see what wsas going on. They thought it was a bomb. It turned out that some car had blown a tire in the underpass near the hotel. But the idea of a bomb being at the top of everyone's mind was a shock. Erbil had a few car bombings when the violence was at it's height a couple years back and clearly that has left its mark.

It's very late here and I must rest. I'm going out with Ahmed and Omar the translators tomorrow morning. They're fun guys and I'm sure they'll show me interesting stuff.