The New Traffic Signs

Eberbach was home to our fourth Brahms performance in Europe and everything went off without a hitch. There was even a special guest star who came from Landau to visit me and see the performance! 

IT’S LENA!!!!!

For those of you who are new to the blog since the last tour, Lena was my host sister for our stop in Landau last year and we have kept in touch throughout the year, so when I knew I was coming back this year I sent her the schedule and she was relatively close to this stop and came to the performance.

With Mason from last year

Lena’s most noticeable talent— besides being a fabulous host—was putting up with the schoolboy immaturity that Mason and I unloaded on her.  Immaturity like this:

*giggle giggle* FAHRT!

So I was buh-thrilled when, for an early birthday present, she pulled this out of her bag and gave it to me:

YYYYEEEESSSS!!!!!

After the Brahms performance our group went back to the house for some post performance dessert and was joined by Zach, Zack, Josh, their host parents and the maestro from the Requiem!

 

Carole, Zack, Kate, Sabrina, Seth, Jessie, Zach, Josh, Maestro Achim and our host mom, Ute!

Sabrina and I decided to mix it up a little bit this time with our flower picture from this performance.  Ute had her own set of Ebers at her house… so what better way to remember our Requiem from Eberbach!!

Get it little Eber!

Artist: The Advisory Circle/ Album: As the Crow Flies

Somewhere That’s Green (Reprise)

 

By the time you are reading this I will have already spent TWO nights in a cabin at the hallowed grounds of the Blue Lake Fine Arts Camp. *pause for shock and awe*  That’s right, folks, this summer I’m headed on another European tour and will be singing the baritone solo in Johannes Brahm’s German Requiem—with the return of Sabrina Laney Warren as the soprano soloist!  I don’t think I’ve mentioned it before on the blog so… there ya go.

My previous post on the first time I went to the camp grounds can be found here, but I thought it would be fun to put up a couple of pictures to remind everyone about how beautiful (and rustic) the setting for this weekend and then intensive week in June will be.

The mystical Blue Lake

 

 

My cabin (That would be the Beaux cabin of the Sienna unit for those of you who care to know)

 

The Stuart outdoor performance shell

 

My sanity will be lost somewhere amongst these trees next month

 

It’s definitely going to be a surreal experience going back, but very different this year as well.  For one thing, last year I was able to throw whatever I needed into the back of the General and drive—I don’t have that luxury living in Houston and have had to be a veeeerrrryyy careful packer.  I’m also sad that some of the other staff members won’t be returning (that means YOU Mason, Ellen, Emily, John and Zach !!) but you’ll also be seeing some familiar faces on the blog in posts to come.

 

Artist: Alan Menken/ Album: Little Shop of Horrors

The Gallery

Now, many of you know I love a good art museum; it’s generally top on the list of sites to see in a foreign city and I have been fortunate enough to visit many of the greats both here and abroad.  So what better way to spend the afternoon than by visiting America’s flagship, the National Gallery of Art.  (Once again, I’ll do my very best to truncate the number of pictures I post… otherwise I’d just end up submitting the entire collection!)

“The Old Violin” by William Michael Harnett.  This has been one of my favorite paintings ever since I was very very young and saw it for the first time with my mom when we visited D.C. years ago.  There’s even a large print of it in my apartment and I love being able to see it every day

Leonardo da Vinci’s “Sheet of Studies.” One fantastic artist and one kick ass mutant superhero

 

Modigliani’s “Portrait of a Young Yentyl”  “Chaim Soutine.”  Yup… you heard me right

Jacques-Louis David’s “Portrait of a Young Woman in White” Subtitled: the face that about 1/4 of the readers of this blog made after seeing the previous picture.  Also, this is how Lena used to glare at Mason and me after making fun of the German language. AUS FAHRT, baby!!!!

Water fountain in the connecting corridors between the east and west buildings

Stairway in the west building.

And now for the family shout out portion of this post!!

Mom (ever the southern belle):

Martin Johnson Heade’s “Giant Magnolias on a Blue Velvet Cloth”

Dad:

Thomas Cole’s “The Voyage of Life: Childhood,” the first in a series of four allegorical paintings representing the different stages of life as well as one of my dad’s favorite art works

Matt:

KILL IT!!! Winslow Homer’s “Right and Left.”  For the life of me I have never understood why that boatman went hunting in such rough weather.  Maybe The Real Housewives of Atlanta was on re-run that week.

Artist: Joni Mitchell/ Album: Clouds

I Wanna Be a Producer

 

Soooooooo… I was just watching last night’s Modern Family on Hulu and this amazing 3:00+ of confectionary advertising came on!

SUCK ON IT !!!

 

When I was living in Waco there were several several options for H.E.B.’s (referred to as HEEBs at Baylor, a school where the majority of its Southern Baptist students, unsurprisingly, don’t realize that sounds exactly the same as the anti-Semitic slur hebe, a derogatory abbreviation for Hebrew) and depending on your needs you would go to a different one.  The ghetto-HEEB was for quick necessities only, as it was the smallest but closest to campus.  The GAP-HEEB (not quite as good as Banana Republic, not quite as bad as Old Navy) was your mid-range option, whereas the Taj Ma-HEEB was where you wanted to go for your finer cheeses, wines, etc.  Just as I was leaving they finished the Barn-HEEB, which, shockingly enough, looks a bit like a barn.

When I moved to Ann Arbor, a HEEB-less town with a surprisingly high Jewish population, I was confronted with the Meijer chain.  Being a good Texan I automatically tried to pronounce the name like it was spanish and turned the “j” into an “h.”  My friend Mason said when he first drove to Michigan for Blue Lake his GPS system would pronounce the “j” as a “dg” as in “Joseph.”  However, the correct pronunciation—for those of you still tuned in—is of course “j” as in “y.”

And thus concludes todays episode of…

Artist: Mel Brooks/ Album: The Producers

Are You About a Size 14?

So here's the dish* A while ago I ran across an interesting article on BoingBoing, a blog I check about 4 times a day, entitled "Broken Crockery Couture" and about designer Li Xiaofeng.  She's basically the secret love child of Josiah Wedgewood and Vivianne Westwood, which is unfortunate because that would make her Li Xiaofeng Westwood-Wedgewood-- not so great a name for a school child but you did just score about a billion points in Scrabble now that they have changed the rules to allow proper nouns (lame). What smashing designs these all are!**

   

Don't worry, gents, you haven't been left out of the proverbial tea party. Well... that is unless your last name happens to be Scozzafava.  (See, even in a post about dresses made of dishes can I get a political zinger in there! *high fives myself a year ago when that story was actually relevant*)

   

Why not slip one of these on for your next business meeting?  Audition?  High tea at the Ritz?  Day at the ball park?

Some of my favorite comments on the post:

Shout out to my friends at PB 757 and 385!!

Wah wah

I had to look it up, but Delft is a type of pottery from the Netherlands, so... what surprisingly appropriate wordplay rtresco!

Raise your hand if you knew that one was coming.  Lena, did you?  Mason?



With all this talk of broken dishes I can't help but think about the stepping stones my mother has been making for years for her garden out of just the same thing.  Following is a tour of an artists work, divided into her artistic influences:

Nationalism

Symbolism

Modernism

Sacred

Trump l'oeil

Steampunk

Portrait of the artist and...

her assistant, as seen from above surveying their work

*Don't worry, I hated myself when I wrote it, you can hate me for reading it

** Yup, did it again

Artist: Jon and Al Kaplan / Album: Silence!-The Musical

Gimme the Prize

Welllllll this is the last post regarding my Blue Lake experiences, and think it's only fitting to end with an AWARDS CEREMONY!!!!!! So without further ado, here are the Blue Lake Fine Arts Camp Awards (The BLFACA's, or "Biscuits" as they are affectionately known as in the business).

International tour I most wished to go on (besides choir, of course): Ballet, with Corey and Jamie

Cory Goei and Jamie Brege.  Party because they had about 1/7th the number of kids we did, but mostly because they are so much fun to hang out with

Most prophetic photograph: Zach Vanderburg

Poor Zach's future head

Most fabulously stereotypical French woman: my host mom from Obernais, Germany

COME. ON. It's in black and white, she's got a saucy pose going, and she's smoking a cigarette!

(It's a little blurry, sorry!)

Choir counselor who, sadly, never appeared on my blog (excluding one group shot): Joshua Nelson

*tear*

Best "That's what she said moment": Sabrina Laney Warren
Using the bus' overhead speaker system:

"Okay, y'all, Peter the busdriver has just asked me to make an announcement regarding getting on and getting off the bus. It is imperitave of you to remember this, as we do not want to scratch the side of the bus with our bags.  Remember, the front is for entrances and exits, and the rear is for exits ONLY, y'all." 

pause...

pause...

pause...

*giggle*

(Not realizing the mic was still on) "Heh, that's what she said."

Most consistent head tilt in photographs: Mason Rivers

"But it's my good side!!," he would say

Most patient host family member: Lena Maiss from Ottersheim, Germany.  She tolerated Mason and I giggling every time we saw "ausfahrt" and saying "that's what she said" alllll the time.  This one's for you, girl!

Hehe... Butt

I imagine this is the face she would give after seeing this post

Best story that I probably shouldn't tell but am going to anyway because it's too good:

So... in the last town, Billerbeck, I was staying with both Maestro's (or is that Maestri?)-- our own Christoph and the guest conductor from that town.  Christoph conducted his last a cappella concert for the European leg and came home and said: "okay, now we eat? now we drink?"  Needless to say Christoph draaaaaank the night away.

The last thing that the house mother said was: "If you stay down here with the lights on, make sure the doors are closed so that animals don't come in." 

Well, I woke up the next morning and went downstairs and the house mother pulls me aside: "Joseph! We woke up at three in the morning and went downstairs and all the lights in the house were on and the doors were open to the porch, and Christoph was sitting in a chair, passed out, only wearing his underwear!!" [to remind you, Christoph is in this blogpost]

So I went down to breakfast chuckling and Christoph came in looking a little perplexed. "Did you have a fun evening last night!?!?," asked the host dad.

"What do you mean," he replied.

As my host dad told him (in German) what they woke up to and showed him where he was sitting outside, Christoph all of a sudden goes: "ALZO, have you seen my teeth? I wondered why I could not find them when I woke up!"

My host mom walked outside, spotted something, bent over, pointed and declaired: "Ummm, are these them?"

Indeed, Christoph's dentures were miraculously found outside and he proceeded to pick them up and take them to the restroom and clean them!!!!  He had no idea of how they got there and no rememberance of even being outside.  Thank goodness no animals had gotten in while he was passed out, though!

And yes, I actualy took a picture of his dentures being cleaned while he wasn't looking

Counselor who most resembles her pet: Emily Goodwin

It's okay, though, because she gets the award for Rockin'ist mamma EVAH:

GET IT MAMMA G!!!!

Best Only picture I have from the after party:

Ellen Williams and Brian Dunbar (an orchestra counselor who moonlighted as a choir member for the Elijah performances)

Picture that most expresses what I felt like at the end of the trip:

The irony is that this phot was taken at the Chicago airport on the way TO Europe.  We hadn't even left the States yet!