Tuesday, May 17th, City Wall and Fourth Concert

We were given the option today of sleeping in and resting, or leaving at 9:00 for a quick trip on the City Wall. About 40 of us chose to go to the Wall; I am glad I was one of them. We drove about 30 minutes and then got out and started climbing up the wall. We now had the option of walking or renting a bike. At first I chose to walk, but I soon changed my mind and rented a bike. Our guide said it would take about 90 minutes to go all the way around the wall, so she recommended going to the South Gate and back. I biked as hard as I could on the inferior bike and made it half way around to the Southwest corner in 15 minutes. By this time I was worn out and had to decide if I should go all the way around or go back. I was alone and only had 20 minutes to get back to the meeting place. If the other half was the same as the half I biked I could have made it. But it was sunny and 100 degrees out and I wasn’t sure if I should risk it. So I went back the way I knew. When I was at the corner I had gone ahead of the group and there wasn’t anyone I knew there. But there were some Chinese guys and I asked if they could take a picture of me on the corner platform. One of them decided he wanted a picture with me so we did that too. By this time it was getting late and I had to book it to get back in time. I made it hot, tired, sweaty, and I felt great. It was the first real workout I’ve had in a long time and it felt good.

We then headed to another banquet lunch where we enjoyed some good food. The Terro balls were super good. The stick chicken was tasty. Other dishes included a yummy spicy potato beef, fried rice, pineapple chicken, fried rice, dumplings, fresh fries, and donkey meat again.

We then went to the hotel, rested, and freshened up for our 4^th concert. The Xian concert hall is amazing. Backstage is random and cramped, but the dressing rooms were spacious and comfy, the stage was large, and the hall was pretty live. So far, the sound adjustment in every place has been completely different. Sometimes, it seems impossible to get everything in such a position to be heard throughout the hall, but at Shanghai it was easy. In Xian, it was hard to figure out what we needed to do to get the sound right. The hall was “wet,” which should be fixed with an audience. For the most part it was easy to play in the hall, but we had to make some big adjustments for our soloist to be heard.

Everyone was curious how the audience would react to the music compared to the past concerts. There were about 1500 hundred seats and we were told they were sold out. But there were still a couple hundred seats not filled when we started the concert. The first half of the concert went well. The audience was polite and clapped loudly, but did not stand or cheer. They cheered for Xian Gou (our excellent violinist) and his encore, but other than that they just politely clapped. We finished the program and when they asked for an encore, Xian Gou came out and played is second encore. They cheered for that and asked for another. This is where the confusion started. We had three encores prepared, “Melody Shop,” Xian Gou’s, and “Stars and Stripes.” At the end of the program we skipped the first and did our soloist’s encore. When the audience asked for another encore, half of the band assumed we would play the one we skipped while the other half assumed we would continue with the encore program. Prof. Haithcock started us and stopped a few measures later because the band was playing two pieces. We were all super embarrassed that we had to stop during a performance. But the audience loved it, clapped with the march, and cheered when it was done. Prof. Haithcock gave our piccolo soloist a bouquet of roses and led her off stage to signal we were done. The lights went on and the audience stood and stared to leave, but the piccolo player walked back on stage with the roses in order to get her music, and everyone started clapping again. By this time the whole band was standing and getting ready to walk off. But the audience would not stop clapping. The piccolo player embarrassingly walked off stage and we all confusedly sat down. The audience still clapped. The lights went dark, they went back to the seats, and Prof. Haithcock walked back on and we performed “Melody Shop.” They loved it and contentedly left without asking for another. This was definitely an interesting performance, but it went well and I think everyone is pretty happy.