Tenerife to Las Palmas, Jan. 31

Last night was an interesting concert. Leonid Kovakos performed a stunning Bartok Violin Concerto #2. (What a great talent he is). Then, after intermission, we headed into the Bruckner Symphony #6. Suddenly, a musician took ill during the second movement. He is fine now but we were all breathless after he fell to the stage floor. After about 20 minutes of care from tour doctor Glenn Newell, we got the word that he was OK and we continued the symphony from where we stopped. Unfortunately, his bass was broken.

Today, we left the hotel and boarded a fast ferry to Las Palmas on the Island of Gran Canaria. The one hour cruise was delightful with sea air and lots of sunshine. Our new hotel, Hotel Santa Catalina is lovely with lots of palm trees and marble. The only problem of the day is that our luggage missed the 10:45 AM ferry and will be arriving around 7:30 PM. So, we will have to go without some of our things until after the concert.

Our First Little Hitch

Nearly three days after departing from Philadelphia, the orchestra has performed its first concert here in Santa Cruz, Tenerife. While the orchestra’s travel here went very smoothly, one key member of our tour was not so lucky. After months of meticulous planning, no one can anticipate every possible contingency of touring.

Upon the orchestra’s arrival in Tenerife on Tuesday afternoon, we learned that our soloist, violinist Leonidas Kavakos, was going to be delayed and would not arrive in time for his rehearsal here on Thursday morning. His flight was cancelled as a result of a 24-hour airport strike in his home country of Greece. The air traffic controllers were walking out in solidarity for farm workers. Anyone see that one coming?

So, after months of careful planning, we had to act quickly to restructure the tight rehearsal schedule on tour. This required numerous phone calls to Maestro Eschenbach (who was still in the States at the time), to Leonidas Kavakos (who was stuck in Greece) and to managers and presenters between London, New York and the Canaries. And after conferring closely with the musicians, we came up with a solution to have the programs fully rehearsed and prepared.

Kavakos has now safely arrived in Tenerife and will perform his first scheduled concert Friday evening. We all feel better knowing he’s finally here. Of course, in the back of my mind was the lingering worry about the possibility of that airport strike lasting more than 24 hours and having to find a last-minute replacement for his concert on Friday. Luckily that wasn’t the case.

Now the orchestra has given its first performance to an extremely attentive and appreciative audience here in Tenerife. The orchestra is in fabulous form. Hopefully we’ve cleared our biggest bump in the road.

more photos

from Jeff Kirschen

This is my 20th tour with the POA. I am excited that we will be in 3 places that I have never been before: Canary Islands, Luxembourg, and Hungary.

Here are a some photos I have taken so far. I hope you like them.




One thing that is fascinating to me is that the hotel lobby is almost always busy with the musicians using their PCs for video chatting. We are not so "out of touch" this way. Especially those with small children can "visit" with the missing parent even when thousands of miles apart. It's about 70 F and sunny. (Sorry, Philadelphia with your "Wintry Mix.") We all know that we will be back to Winter soon in Luxembourg, Hungary, and Austria.

El Teide

The island of Tenerife was built by the accretion of three large sheild volcanoes. The result is the third-largest volcanic ocean island on Earth by volume, with its dormant El Teide the third highest volcano on a volcanic ocean island, at 3,718m/12,198ft above sea level.

Thanks to Wikipedia for the trivia.

Yesterday, I joined Rob Kesselman (bass), Don Liuzzi (principal timpani), and Paul Roby (assoc. principal 2nd violin) on a hike up Mt. Teide. We disregarded our jetlag and left the hotel at 6am, arriving to the trailhead just before 8.

The fearsome four hitting the trail just after sunrise



Don and Paul starting out



Rob, way above the clouds



Paul (self-nicknamed 'Towel Head') checking out the rest of the island, including the Las Cañadas caldera and part of the trail we've covered





Once we got high up, we could pretty much see the rest of the island. See the towns way down there? We also encountered some snow.



The peak... to which we didn't get to climb. :(


The peak was unfortunately closed for the season. And when the Teide National Park rangers say closed, they mean closed. A German couple ahead of us went for it and got whistled at quite harshly. Knowing we could have made the summit if we had wanted to, we considered it done. Then we took the cable car back down.


Super-Happy Fun Team on the cable car


The problem was, the cable car didn't let us off where we parked the car, so we had about a 3km walk on the road. As if the 1,150m/3,773ft vertical climb hadn't been enough.




But we did eventually make it back to the car, and a friendly fellow hiker took our picture.




I was pretty impressed with myself to get such a great photo from an open window of a moving vehicle--here's Teide from the drive home. What a great day!

canary islands - santa cruz 2

our hotel in santa cruz

today was a free day and many people took full advantage of it. several colleagues rented cars to explore the island. some went to a volcano named pico del teide and brought back some great pictures (here is a link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pico_del_Teide). a few went windsurfing and many others just stayed in to practice and take it easy. i was part of the last group mentioned that didn't do very much.

che-hung chen (violist) and i walked around town a bit and then proceeded to look for the beach.



beautiful park across the street from our hotel

i actually studied spanish in high school but let me tell you, not much has stayed w/ me. i was pretty much repeating the same question, "donde esta la playa?" to several people we walked by. a lady at the front desk of the hotel said it was only 5 or 10 minutes by bus and pointed it out on the map. we had to walk a bit to catch the particular bus and since the weather was nice, we decided to just go by foot. as we walked along the ocean, all we could see were oil refineries. we kept thinking we would see something around the next bend but after 1 hour of walking, figured we should turn back.





after all this walking, we had worked up quite an appetite so we went to a place next to the grocery store that had this picture inside.

how could i resist?

unfortunately, it was closed as many other restaurants are during the mid-afternoon siesta period. so we found another place where i totally butchered the spanish language again while trying to order a sandwich. as we walked back to the hotel, we passed by the 1st place again and it was now open. so che-hung kindly volunteered to eat the sandwich i just bought so i could order this heart-attack in a bun.

it actually wasn't as good as it looks in the picture

for dinner, several of us went to a recommended tapas place for some incredible food (we ended up going to 2 that were side by side). no matter how badly i sound when i order from the menu, everyone has been so patient and nice. they even advise us on what to order and so far, haven't been wrong.



tomorrow is our first rehearsal in the morning so i better go to sleep. buenas noches!

canary islands - santa cruz 1

hello everyone. we finally arrived in the canary islands this afternoon after a long day of travel. we actually left the night before and first stopped in madrid, where we had a long layover. fortunately, our staff reserved an entire business lounge w/ refreshments at the airport for us to wait and rest in. thank you all for that!

the weather in santa cruz was beautiful. i wouldn't say it was warm but it's certainly a welcome change to all the cold weather we've been having back home. on the bus ride from the airport to the hotel, the views of the ocean were breathtaking. hope we can play a concert here during the summer.....



dinner was provided for all of us at the hotel and it was incredible. there was so much food but the highlight had to be the huge pans of paella, one of Spain's national dishes. i think we all ate to our heart's content. it was a wonderful first meal to kick off this tour.

afterwards, some people just went to bed while many of us congregated in the lobby where we could get wireless internet to email back home. quite a few of us (myself included) could also be seen talking to our computer screens as we spoke w/ loved ones via skype. i have to say i am constantly amazed by technology.

tomorrow is a free day and i should probably practice, but would also like to walk along the beach. i hope to do both.