i can flyyy!!!

The best I could do was a fourteen-hour flight ("logically" connecting in Chicago... at least then I can say I've stopped by the windy city, although I sadly won't have time to see Professor Vincent Scully's favorite skyscrapers) from Brussels to Rochester on Wednesday the 22nd. After a day of "sightseeing" in the economically declining city and my audition on Friday the 24th, I'll hop on a painfully long nine-hour train ride to New Haven (hellooo Amtrak Guest Rewards points!), where I'll crash at Matt's apartment above the Chinese grocery I used to frequent and use my keys (currently in safekeeping with YSECS) and spelunking skillz to practice my a$$ off in the basement of Woolsey Hall for my ISM audition, for which I am woefully unprepared but for which the Institute is most generously willing to reimburse me $300. I had no idea when the ISM director accepted my request to be omitted from the pre-screening recording requirement that he was agreeing to a reimbursement deal. Mother Yale continues to be good to me. I'm just afraid that I won't be up to task, especially since I'll be playing the organ of the United Church on the Green rather than on my home turf in Battell Chapel. To which, I am reminded, I should also get my keys from YSECS.

Speaking of Woolsey Hall, regular access to the Newberry Memorial Organ, a four-manual Skinner and one of the greatest organs in the country, is reason enough for any organist, seasoned or aspiring, to give her right little toe to be at the ISM.


Of course, having bought the ticket, I now don't have enough money to pay my Conservatorium tuition, which means still no lessons before my audition. Maybe the judges will be impressed at the level I've gained by myself. Errr... maybe not. Finances. Woe is me. Just consumed the penultimate American Godiva chocolate from DaveTek to console self.

But today I finally found salvation from organlessness. OLV-o/d-Dijle kerk is only open from 1.30 to 4.30, and usually some practice time goes to Inge, or very occasionally, to the big boss himself, Wannes (who ironically has now returned to teaching at the Conservatorium, where I am not learning). Into the picture comes Sint-Laurentiuskerk in Antwerpen. A couple blocks away from the Conservatorium (where I still somehow have a student mailbox), the Byzantine complex stands in magnificence and slight decay, unostentatious redbrick on the outside and Romanesque/Egyptian elements on the inside. Theoretically, Conservatorium students can practice there 24/7. In reality, it gets very creepy and even more cold in the evening. By the time I took my leave, having lost the better one of my two working pencils, the light was just dying. I no longer felt cold, perhaps because the heater had been working, more likely because my senses had stopped registering temperature. But I had warm hugs, a warm car, and warm dinner to come home to. So I'm not complaining. :)

The more I browse the internet, the more I realize that Eastman, unlike Yale, has great organ connections with the Low Countries. My teacher Joris Verdin played a concert there in December, and Eastman professor Hans Davidsson will be featered next summer on the concert calendar of De Kathedraal in Antwerpen. Speaking of which, info and photos for the glorious Metzler organ that I got to play once there... and hopefully will soon play again.