Organs

Fun Fact No. 58: Trash days are everyday. Nope, no assigned trash day. Garbage trucks kind of swing by whenever they feel like it at whatever time they feel like and they just honk their INSANELY LOUD horns and you better get your trash to the street. You can´t leave your trash on the street because the 1,001 dogs will attack it and leave trash everywhere (including bathroom trash which, if you recall some 30 fun facts ago, may NOT be flushed down the toilet. ICK.).

SOOOOO.....getting ready for another concert. Not the one with the Korean pianist, Li, nor the one with the choir I direct. This one is with another choir, the Polyphonic Choir of Loreto (Coro Polifónico de Loreto) and the choir´s former director, Nancy Dunn from Chicago, Illinois. Nancy received her DMA from Northwestern in Organ Performance and went on to teach organ and direct choirs at Georgetown in D.C. for about 14 years. She had a short career in forestry engineering before continuing with her performance degrees and so she´s always been mildly obsessed with the Amazon. She came down here 9 years ago and never went back. She started a library in a small village in BFE Amazon, and brought down a piano and directed the choir for a while. Since she was originally an organist, she recently brought down her GORGEOUS electric organ (which took 5 months to get through customs) . With that lovely organ comes a concert this coming Sunday in the main cathedral. Bach, Beethoven, Vivaldi, Rossini, Saint-Saens, Handel and Bernstein (the Adonai from Psalm 153) are on the menu. The coolest piece is the Bernstein, super atonal and delightfully crunchy. I´m playing a Handel sonata (that I haven´t played since I was about 14) and a Vivaldi Pastorale. It´s gonna rock (in that Baroque, organish kind of way). I´m excited for it.

Also, this Friday I give a lecture on Ethnomusicology at the private university here in Iquitos. It should be interesting...here´s hoping I don´t completely botch it and give these kids the wrong idea!

On a sadder note, Mario Luis is leaving this coming week. I know I´ll see him in Austin in the fall, but he has been such an integral part of my experience here that it´s hard to imagine Iquitos without him. Monica is also hitting the road soon, and I´m mildly devastated at the departure of both of them. Boo hoo....