A week in Ede by Julia Hill

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AYO Tour Blog

At the end of our final rehearsal at the Akoesticum in Ede, The Netherlands, AYO’s Director of Operations, Warren, took the podium, proclaiming:

“You are about to perform seven concerts across four countries and two continents, in two weeks!”

…So the real tour starts now! The last ten days have been overflowing with rehearsals, freshly baked Dutch bread and walks in the forest (no tick disasters, thankfully).

After our tutors and conductor Carlo had carefully crafted our sound, we were ready for tour conductor, David Robertson.

Now let me tell you, David is the master of storytelling. It was like he was writing a postcard to us from different times in his life.

There’s one moment in the second movement of Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 4 that is so delicate that David likened it to holding a duckling he had saved from a busy road. His story immediately morphed our sound into something innocent and precious.

David challenged our imaginations, daring us to create a musical movie with Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade. Instead of playing arpeggios, we are riding the waves on Sinbad’s ship, instead of playing grace notes, we are braving bustling streets. We do not simply play Scheherazade … we ARE Scheherazade.

As for the Sultan in the story… in the words of David: “He’s so bad that he’s the kind of guy that human resources were created for”.

I think we should all think about music like David does. His ability to connect those black dots on a page to stories of humanity is at the core of what we do as musicians. In doing this, we can build a bridge to our audiences, touching their hearts in a way that words never can.

Outside of rehearsals, many of us have filled our free time with:

a) Ping pong or board/card games
b) Forest Walks
c) Exploring nearby towns like Utrecht, Ede and Amersfoort
d) Handball
e) Riding bicycles!!!

I’ll let the pictures do the talking for that. 😉

Bike riding in Ede.

Sightseeing in Utrecht.

Taking a break from rehearsals with a game of handball.

Farewell Akoesticum!

But it has come time to leave our temporary home at the Akoesticum. While we will miss the bread, the Krokets and the chocolate sprinkles, we are looking forward to bringing our music to Germany, Austria, the Netherlands and Australia!