Mark Your Calendars!

Well, it's finally here! Our new season schedule. We wrapped up our final summer concert at the Bard Music Festival. As usual, the festival was highly intriguing, with its focus this year on Elgar (and "his world"). We learned some very interesting repertoire -- works by Hubert Parry and John Ireland!

Check out our 2007-2008 season schedule. See if we'll be in your area, stop by at one of our concerts, and come say hi afterwards!

See you all soon.

Crazy Girls

In the 2008-2009 season (our 10th anniversary season!) we'll be playing some tours for Live On Stage, a great organization that sends all kinds of performers around the country. http://www.liveonstage.biz/html/liveonstage.htm To help them promote our group, we agreed to do a showcase performance at their annual conference in Nashville. Seemed simple enough. We found cheap, direct flights the night before and the morning after. Booked a hotel. Reserved a car at the Nashville airport. Easy... we thought.

Showed up at LaGuardia (some of us earlier than others... nice to have a sister to breathlessly call from a stalled-out bus who will print your boarding passes and wait for you at the security line).

Scheduled to board at 7pm.

7:05 - flight cancelled
7:15 - all flights that evening to Nashville, Memphis, St. Louis, Atlanta, and Charlotte cancelled due to heavy thunderstorms
7:15 - airline rebooks us on a flight the next day arriving an hour after our showcase performance time
7:30 - call Avis, National, Dollar, Enterprise, and Thrifty LaGuardia locations - no cars
7:40 - miraculously, Hertz has a car
7:45 - American Airlines promises to refund the outgoing half of our tickets without cancelling the return tickets (update... 3 have been refunded, cello ticket refund is pending "review")
7:50 - get in line at Hertz (Friday night with tons of cancelled flights)
8:40pm - start driving
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enough Diet Coke and country music (yeah, TN radio...) to last a year
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11:10am - stop driving



Nap, eat, rehearse, perform. Life on the road.

Saratoga and Martha's Vineyard

The great thing about summer music festivals is that they usually occur in the most beautiful places and the most appealing vacation spots! If only we had more time to explore and enjoy them.... Still, who can complain about a week split between Saratoga Springs, NY and Chappaquidick - the beautifully remote little island off the end of Martha's Vineyard? Here we are enjoying the wind on the ferry ride over to the Vineyard.


And here's Donna sporting her very chic wrist bands to avoid motion sickness!



















Emily and I also found time to revive our highly competitive ping pong rivalry. Notice Emily's "armwarmers" which she wears during rehearsal to help her warm up but which also seemed to give her a distinct advantage in this particular ping pong match. I must admit that I lost this round...;-( There's always next time!