"Having flown from New York to St Louis on a noisy, hot little plane, Dan and Eric from the orchestra picked us up and took us straight to our first rehearsal.  Unfortunately, there hadn't been any food on the flight and we were all starving, so Dan and Eric very kindly went out to the St Louis Bread Co to get some sandwiches and salads for us, which we devoured in the break and which were so delicious that we went back to the St Louis Bread Co every day for the rest of the week.

The "not so good news" on arrival was in the form of a text from Simon Grant saying that he hadn't yet received his visa from the US Embassy in London.  He was to fly in 2 days so this was really quite serious.  It was unfortunate that my first conversation with Jeremy Geffen at the orchestra had to be about a Plan B for Simon.  In the meantime, Simon managed to get hold of my emergency contact at the US Embassy and we just prayed that she would be able to sort this out in time.

Rehearsing Proverb

We were rehearsing in Powell Symphony Hall, which is where we would be performing Sinfonia in a few days.  This first concert was to be in the Touhill Center (sic) for the Performing Arts, but we couldn't get in until the concert day.

The players for You Are (Variations) were already sounding excellent.  The wind players in particular were absolutely brilliant, and we all agreed we'd never heard such beautiful flute playing with such immaculate tuning.  There were several occasions in the rehearsal when the flutes were doubling the tenors in double-octaves, and the resultant harmonics sounded as though the sopranos were singing.  David Robertson kept looking across to check it wasn't us.

Downtown St Louis

The following day, we rehearsed You Are again, which was really shaping up well.  It was lovely to be working with David again.  He is always so kind to us, and we felt extremely welcome in St Louis.  Proverb unfortunately received hardly any attention as there just wasn't time.  David was working on a very tight schedule and, having done some work with the vibraphones alone, had to leave this one to us.  To take our minds off the pressure, we decided on some retail therapy, so off we all went to DSW shoe warehouse and a good old American mall.

Shoe warehouse

We stayed for a meal in the "Cheesecake Factory" after which we realised we could all have eaten plenty if we'd only ordered 3 meals between 7.

So, the concert day came around and off we went to Touhill which was a considerable drive from our hotel.  Poor Will had to go straight back to the hotel on arrival as I had forgotten my concert trousers - duh!  

This hall was a very pleasant surprise.  It was just the right acoustic for Reich and, although not as pretty, was a better venue for this programme than Powell Hall.

David Robertson likes to chat a bit to the audience which always goes down well.  He gave us a huge build-up (which thankfully we didn't hear about until afterwards!) and fortunately we all delivered the goods.  Both pieces went extremely well and it was great to see how much the players had fallen in love with (and got to grips with) the music.  David is so good at passing on his enthusiasm and bringing new repertoire to orchestras and audiences wherever he goes.

The best news of the day was that Simon's visa had turned up so he, Rachel and Mike all made it to St Louis as scheduled - hurrah!"

Micaela