Questions answered

So, we've received some questions from our commenters about the nuts and bolts of the trip that I will try to address if I can....

First of all the weather: so far the only snow we've seen was less than an inch after our first concert in Albert Lea, MN. Apparently in Minnesota that doesn't even count as any snow at all! But mostly we've been really lucky to have sunny weather in the 40's - Ryan even wore shorts yesterday, but remember that he is a Minnesotan born and raised ;-)

Of the three concerts we've played so far, two were in big high school auditoriums and one was at a Community Center. I'm terrible with numbers but my guess is that we had about 500-600 people in the audience at each of the high school auditoriums. The Community Center was much smaller - probably we had about 150?

The acoustics were best at the Community Center - high school auditoriums are generally designed to be used for theatre productions and thus they are acoustically "dead" or not very resonant. This it makes it harder for us to get a rich sound but we do our best!

Donna is certainly better equipped to talk about the pianos than I am, but I can say that it is a pianists curse to have to adjust to whatever instrument shows up. All three of us then work to recreate the Claremont sound that we have in our ears with that piano and in that space. It feels totally different to perform in a church than in a black box theater, in a living room, or in a gorgeously designed hall meant for chamber music.

Another challenge with the pianos is the tuning. While Emily and I can just tune up our instruments on our own, a piano's 88 keys and many hundred strings require a professional piano tuner's expertise. Often it is hard to find a qualified piano tuner in a more remote area, and even if an expert comes in for a couple of hours, if the piano hasn't been tuned in a year, it is unlikely to hold its tuning through a whole concert. Just another one of the challenges....

Well, enough for now...more info about our program, dresses etc. to come!