Friday, May 13th. 2 down, 7 to go!!
Today was a nice and easy day. We were able to sleep in and have a restful morning before heading out. I wasn’t hungry this morning so I skipped breakfast. I chilled in the hotel room and caught up on pictures for the website. We left the hotel at 11 AM and were all dressed up for a lunch banquet at the Shanghai Jiao Tong University. We had a pretty normal buffet style meal.There were a couple odd dishes, like shredded jelly fish and marinated radish sticks. I did not have the jelly fish again, but I did try the radish. It was not good. It was crunchy and the taste was super weird.
After lunch a few of us went to the auditorium to set up for the rehearsal while the rest went on to the lecture. The percussionists, basses, and harps were the ones who had to go early to set up.We then had a rehearsal from 3:30 to 5:00. After that we hung out with some students from the university and had dinner.
We then went back to the hall and finished preparing for the concert. It started at 7:00 with the university student band performing three traditional Chinese songs. I was again surprised by the high quality of the performance. Both this university and the one we attended in Hangzhou are not specifically music universities. These students are not music majors, yet they are still able to put on an impressive performance. The quality of music for the first university was higher, but the intonation was better with this band.
At about 7:30 we took the stage. Most of us were expecting a similar reaction to the one we received at the university in Hangzou. But that was not the case. The audience was polite, but did not seem appreciative. There was lots of noise in the audience. The people were talking to each other, on cell phones, and casually walking in and out. They simply clapped after each piece and did not ask our soloist for an encore. We thought for sure we would get some sort of reaction after playing Shanghai Overture, but there was simply just applause. However, they loved the saxophone quartet with band accompaniment by Bolcom. There were some cheers and a little more clapping. So the quartet did a simple encore. Many of us think that did more damage than good. We, the band, cheered louder than the audience did when they finished their short piece.We played our final selection and then Prof. Haithcock asked one of our hostesses something. She then spoke, in Chinese so I couldn’t understand, to the audience and received a loud cheer and applause. Xian Gou, our soloist came back out and performed an encore. When that was done we got a similar demand for another encore. Carla and I were super confused and did not completely understand what Prof. Haithcock said when he gave us encore directions during the applause. I thought we were going to continue with the marches, but we were actually going to do Meditation with Xian Gou. By the time I realized that, Prof. Haithcock was about to raise his hands to give us the down beat! The beginning of this piece has a major harp part and neither Carla nor I were ready. In about 3 seconds we managed to find our music, fix the pedals, and then start with the right notes at the right time. I don’t know how we managed to do it, but we did and it sounded great!
The audience again cheered and clapped for another encore. Xian Gou left the stage, we finished all his encores, and we played Stars and Stripes. We got another demand for an encore and proceeded with the Star Wars Main Theme. That was definitely their favorite, but they did not ask for another encore. Over all we played an amazing concert, but the audience didn’t seem interested until we performed the saxophone piece and then the encores. Even then, the encore demand did not compare to that of the University in Hangzou.
We finished the concert around 9:30 and the stage was struck and packed up by 10:00. We loaded the buses and got back to the hotel by 11:00. This was definitely a different experience from our first concert, but a good experience.
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