What a week

It’s been crazy. Lots of family came to visit plus the Chautauqua Symphony season opened. The kids spent every afternoon at the children’s beach with their cousins while my husband and I attended symphony rehearsals.

This is always such a weird time of year for us – we shift gears big-time from the life we live during the rest of the year. The advent of summer and all the accompanying activities plus major shift in occupation and getting reacquainted with all the friends and colleagues we haven't seen since the previous summer has us scrambling to find our sea legs. We wait all year to play (trumpet) at this level professionally but the schedule is brutal – work hard, play hard, collapse into bed at night.

But there’s great music to be made and wonderful productions to see. Due to a no-show, I was able to attend the first performance of The Marriage of Figaro by the Chautauqua Opera Company last night. The quality is top-level; you won’t hear these leading roles sung any better anywhere. Great staging and costumes too.

Tonight we took part in the orchestra’s performance of Gustav Mahler’s first symphony, the Titan. A standard of the repertoire, it’s well-crafted, expressive, and dramatic, with great brass parts. You gotta love it when everyone’s playing so loud that you can barely hear yourself cranking. But it’s great to sit on stage with world-class musicians and experience their artistry and mastery up-close.

There are many intriguing lectures being given at Chautauqua (Institution) too though I've barely had time to check into that. Lots of hot-button issues being discussed. Tony Campolo will be here next week; if I can't get to any lectures I'll at least try to post some excerpts from reports in the Chautauqua Daily newspaper.

Meanwhile, don’t know when I’ll get this house picked up or get the clothes washed or any food in the fridge, but hey, life is good.