Cindy and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day (make that Week)

Wow, boy, am I glad last week is over. We basically had all the drama you could possibly ever have in a music festival (minus the three light bulbs bursting during concerts at the beginning of the festival) rolled into about 5 days. Eeeesh.

Here's how it went:

Monday - Actually, Monday was pretty awesome. Each year, the President's office sponsors a picnic for all the students, faculty, and staff up on top of Aspen Mountain, so we all get to ride the Gondola up to the top for free and get a free lunch (pizza, burger, or caesar salad - I went for the burger. yummm.). The view from atop was gorgeous, and it was so much fun having a chance to hang out, discuss plans to go paragliding, and wander around at 12,000 feet.

The gondola - it just keeps going and going and going...the whole ride was maybe 5 min long.

Say hello to the gorgeous Artistic Admin team (minus myself; we all came together in my giant Suburban). Front row, left to right: Courtney [Asst. Artist Liaison], Jessica [Head Artist Liaison], Rachel [Program Book Intern], Manasseh [Assistant Program Book Editor and my wonderful roommate]. Back row: Shelby [Music Production Coordinator], Donovan [violinist in the Aspen Contemporary Ensemble and Jessica's boyfriend - just an honorary member of the Artistic team]. Not pictured: Frances [Head Program Book Editor], Asadour [Artistic Administrator].

The complete hullabazoo as we approached the top of the mountain. Yes, that's about 750 students + 200 faculty + 100 staff...yeah, that's a lot of people.

From left to right: Me, Laura [AACA (American Academy of Conducting at Aspen) Assistant Manager], Evan [Orchestra Coordinator], Leslie [Student Performance Coordinator], Lizzy [AOTC (Aspen Opera Theater Center) Orchestra Manager], Dave [Aspen Concert Orchestra Manager - whose students came up to him during the picnic and said, "Mr. Nischwitz, can you please take a picture of us?"], Jessica, Courtney

Tuesday - Apparently I'd been getting Monday 7/21 and Tuesday 7/22 mixed up on a ton of different things, resulting in a few mix-ups. Nothing major though...

Wednesday - This is where it all begins. Wednesday afternoon, I pick up baritone AB for a rehearsal with his pianist, CD, in the middle school. After dropping off AB, we realize that CD is nowhere to be found, so I wander around the middle school searching for him in case he couldn't find the room. Meanwhile, because I left my cell phone in the car, apparently it's ringing off the hook with the entire world telling me that CD is at Harris Hall and somehow missed the boat on the fact that his rehearsal was at the middle school. No one is sure what happened - I assumed that because AB was the one who told me that his rehearsal was at the middle school, he had already discussed time and place with CD. Apparently that wasn't the case, resulting in several frustrated people. Grr.

Thursday - Apparently conductor Ludovic Morlot, who had been scheduled to conduct Sunday's concert, has a family emergency and has to go back to France. After some frantic searching, conductor (and former BachSoc conductor!) Hugh Wolff '75 is set to take his place. This is all exciting, except now it means that we have an entirely different repertoire and a new itinerary to take care of.

Friday - As Courtney introduces herself to CD at another one of their rehearsals, he says to her, "Oh, are you my page-turner?" Somehow, we never got the memo that he'd wanted a page turner - his management had indicated earlier that he didn't want one. Whoops. Their concert is on Saturday evening, and we don't have time to contact the collaborative piano department - Courtney calls me, and I head over in a flash. I've had a few odd experiences here and there turning pages...and I quickly realize that they want just about everything to be attacca, which means all the movements to flow with minimal (if any at all) break in between. What makes it more difficult is that AB and CD speak to each other in German, and I have no idea what they're saying or where they're starting and have to find their place by listening and matching it with the music. It's not hard, but it's difficult when they start a few measures before a page-turn and then I have to leap up and flip the page - as quietly as possible, of course.

AB and CD have another rehearsal that evening, so I pick up AB to take him to the concert hall. On the way, he tells me that he wants to have more rehearsal time in the concert hall the next day. I tell him I'll try and figure out what I can arrange for him, but ultimately, the hall's basically booked from 7AM until the time of the concert. This is where it gets fun: he then tells me that unless he can get more time in the concert hall, he won't be able to perform the next night. Oy vey.

I go find Brad, the production manager, and tell him about the predicament. The schedule for the hall the next day basically went something like this:

9:00-12:00 - Aspen Festival Orchestra rehearsal
12:00-2:30 - Removal of the stage extension put in for the AFO rehearsal
2:30-3:30 - Piano tuning time
3:30 - House opens for 4:00 concert
4:00 - Chamber Music Concert
6:00-7:30 - Piano tuning time
7:30 - House opens for 8:00 concert
8:00 - Concert featuring AB and CD

Now, the real complication was that, well, 100 feet away from the concert hall the next morning, the Dalai Lama would be speaking in the Benedict Music Tent. Yes, welcome to Aspen. Yes, John McCain was also in town. As was John Travolta. And a few other luminaries. Because of that, the entire orchestra had to show up at 7:30AM to go through security, and then they would all be locked in the hall until the rehearsal was over, and then get escorted out. We all had to carry credentials with us at all times and our names and photos had to be on a master list that was handed to the members of the state service on duty the next day. So basically, there was barely any time to squeeze in an extra hour-long rehearsal.

Brad came with me and helped me explain to AB and CD that there was no way that they would be able to get any extra time in the hall the next day - they could free up maybe an hour in the evening, cutting into the piano tuning time, but other than that, absolutely nothing. AB insisted that the morning orchestra rehearsal be moved so that he could have a chunk of time to rehearse in the middle of the day, or that the chamber music concert use an untuned piano. Otherwise, he was firm - he wouldn't perform.

Ohhhh dear. So we then call Asadour in, and take him out of a concert to have him explain the situation to AB and CD. We eventually compromise and give them time from 5:45-7:00, which seems to somewhat placate the duo (although not entirely). In the meantime, I'm in my complete don't-shoot-the-messenger mode as they chatter away in German to each other about the situation. Eeeks.

The rest of the rehearsal goes as smoothly as it can, and then I take AB home. Afterwards, I head back to the concert hall and pick up credentials for myself, Hugh Wolff, and Gil Shaham, all of whom will be attending the lock-down rehearsal the next day. I call Hugh and Gil and make sure that they're all set, that we'll meet at the front desk of the lobby at 7:30AM and take the shuttle over, and I'll have my car parked close by overnight so that the next day I'll be able to take them both home after the rehearsal.

VIP passes to the Dalai Lama! Too bad it means that we can't go anywhere near him.

Then, as I'm finally about to head home, I have my first traffic accident. Whoops. I was backing out of my parking space, and saw an ostensibly empty space behind mine (then again, it was pitch black in the parking lot and the back lights on the giant red monster don't work too well), and I back into it...until I hear a crunch. Oh dear. Nothing serious - just a few scratches on my car, and scratches and a busted light on the other, but, well, let's just say that that was the last thing I needed in my otherwise perfect (hah.) day.

When the dust settles (and I make copies of insurance information, yada yada yada), I finally get to park my car about a block away and then walk the 6 or so blocks home (yes, in the pitch blackness). Oyyyyy.

Saturday - I'm stuck in the morning running a few last-minute errands and I can't make it over to pick up Gil and Hugh at 7:30 on the dot (especially since I'm zipping around town on my bike and not a car), so I call the hotel and leave them a message at the front desk. Then, when I finally get there, Gil and Hugh are nowhere to be found. The front desk tells me that they'd already taken the shuttle to the hall - apparently they never got my message. Ohhh dear. So I hop right back on my bike and race over to the hall as quickly as my legs can do at about 7:55 in the morning, meet them on the other side of security, and then hand them their credentials. Funny, despite all the buildup, the actual event is really lax - all they did was check my VIP badge and then put me through the metal detector. We spend the morning locked in the hall while I work with Sara the librarian on putting bowings into parts for upcoming concerts, and everything with the rehearsal goes finely and dandily.

I have maybe a half an hour of down-time after the rehearsal to take a shower, then zip to the middle school to where AB and CD are rehearsing, sit with them in their rehearsal and practice turning pages (I swear, there's a particular art to it...), take CD home, have about an hour to make/eat lunch and pack myself a sandwich, and then race over to the concert hall again to work the 4PM concert. It's my last concert with members of the Ying Quartet, who are perhaps the coolest people in the world - they're super-chill and I've been a huge fan ever since they played in my Beethoven String Quartet seminar freshman year.

Afterwards, I stay at the hall, getting ready for the 8:00 concert. Since this is already super-long, I'll just say that it went as well as it possibly could, and it was quite amazing. I was nervous as heck, but I've now made my Aspen debut :-). Courtney and I went out to dessert with her mom and friend afterwards to celebrate the end of an excruciating week. Mmm creme brulee.

Sunday - I'd been looking forward to this day all week. Whenever I work Aspen Festival Orchestra concerts, the schedule always has a 9:30-12:00 open rehearsal and a concert at 4:00 that day. So in between, Rachel, the orchestra manager, and I always go to our favorite restaurant downtown, a super-delicious vegetarian place called the Explore Bistro, which sits above the Explore Bookstore. Believe me, I'm a complete and total carnivore, but their seitan soft tacos are to die for. Mmmm. Over some of those, a tofu reuben, gazpacho soup, and warm pumpkin cake a la mode, we melt away all of the stress of the entire week before - it's about an hour and a half of heaven in our hectic day.

The concert itself goes relatively well - Gil Shaham is an Aspen favorite, which means that afterwards, there is a fire-hazard-worthy amount of fans crowding the backstage area. We tried to give him a chance to put away his instrument, but he decided not to so that he could visit with all of his fans - and there still wasn't enough time for him to visit with everyone before intermission ended! He's one of the most genuinely nice people I've worked with all summer - completely easy-going and ridiculously funny with his Zoolander references and knowingly terrible puns. He's been here almost all summer so far, and will be leaving next week. We're all going to miss him.

Rachel, Nick (another orchestra manager), and a few others and I make plans to soak in the hot tub that evening at the female orchestra managers' house. A few hours later, though, I get a text message from Rachel - she's going to bed. We were all exhausted.


So there you have it. After that, I can do anything - right? (Actually, I don't even want to try.)

Mishmash

We're now at the end of Week 5 (of 9) of the festival. Oh my, how time flies. I'm currently sitting on the lawn by the tent, enjoying the sounds of Aspen Festival Orchestra and Nadja Salern0-Sonnenberg performing Astor Piazzola's Four Seasons of Buenos Aries, meanwhile trying to figure out how to sum up all that's happened these past few weeks.

My job isn't particularly challenging. I contact people to get information about people, and compile all of that information into one document and distribute it. At some times, it gets complicated - scheduling interviews, for example (wouldn't it be so much easier if the interviewer and the interviewee just talked to each other about scheduling these things rather than going back and forth when you don't know both of their scheudles to begin with?). The perks, though are that I get to interact closely with the musicians that arrive and observe their rehearsals and performances. Alan Gilbert called me two nights ago and told me that he'd be happy to come visit BachSoc next year when he's in town conducting the Boston Symphony. Sarah Chang gave me a really nice bottle of face serum. I got to sit in on a live performance interview between Fred Child, host of American Public Media (and formerly NPR)'s Performance Today, and the Ying Quartet, who was up until this year Harvard's Quartet-in-Residence.

At the same time, though, I do find myself with a lot of down-time. It feels a little funny to me - I sit at rehearsals and wait for disasters to happen so that I can control them, but otherwise (as is mostly always the case), I sit and find myself reading or playing freecell or doing other things completely unrelated to my job. It's actually sort of nice to have that free time; I think I'm currently on my 6th Cultural Revolution memoir of the summer and I'm plowing my way though C++ for Dummies. But then again...this is definitely not the sort of thing I'm used to. Last summer, I was a PRISE fellow, working in the Schier Lab at all random hours of the day, meanwhile running to rehearsals of the Harvard Summer Chorus and the Brahms Society Orchestra, and finding plenty of time for excursions into Boston and surrounding areas with friends.

It feels, though, that in switching between the world of science and music, I've needed to change the way that I think about things. Science is about proof and consequence - every claim is put through a series of tightly controlled experiments for verification. On the other hand, music is about emotion and interpretation - as the composer Osvaldo Golijov said a few days ago as we lunched with the League of American Orchestras Management Fellows, music is about representing the entire palette of human emotions. Just the sheer number of musical genres that exist attest to the complexity of human nature. Because of that, though, I find it so difficult to criticize music. Experimental design and data analysis can very much tell us the differences between a "good" and "bad" science experiment, but how do you calculate whether a piece of music is "good" or "bad?" In my Postcolonial Classics class last semester, Professor Homi Bhabha spent a few lectures trying to categorize the definition of a classic novel. His opinion was that it dared to question the beliefs of the time, leaving readers with a sense of uneasiness that would transcend race and generation. That certainly seems to be the case with all the old masters - Bach, Beethoven, Schoenberg, Stravinsky - they were all revolutionaries in their day, exploring new forms, new chords, new techniques. But what is the case with new music today, when "Classical Music" as we know it is becoming more and more of an esoteric pallette of what my cohort Shelby calls "dings and beeps," and the popular music of the day always (excuse my over-generalization and over-simplification) seems to be a series of repetitive chord progressions?

I have no answers, and I don't think I ever will. And in the full manner of shirking all the heavy stuff (it is summer vacation, after all), let's look at some pictures!

Cottonwood. It's EVERYWHERE. Giant piles of the stuff have been floating through the air, almost giving the illusion of a soft winter snow. Now, if only the stuff actually melted like snow, instead of piling in every corner imaginable. Seriously, Disney should just plant a few cottonwood trees and they'd probably save a ton of money on all of that confetti that they sprinkle to simulate wonderland, meanwhile helping the environment. Think about it.

Hunter Creek. There's a trail that goes along the creek up to the valley at the top of the mountain. This is what the creek looks like at the bottom...

...and this is what it looks like at the top. Soooo pretty.

At the top of the creek, there's all these dilapidated log cabins. Kind of creepy, but it's be cool to camp out in one of them sometime...

As I was on my way home, I ran into a giant moose-on-a-truck. Errr. Coincidentally, last night I went over to my fellow liaison Jessica's house, and in her parking lot, I saw another one of these things. Trust me, it's a lot creepier at 1AM under a dim streetlight.

And, of course, the long-awaited picture of my new ride. Heck yeah. Sort of. (Actually, between the three of us Artist Liaisons, I'm the only one who hasn't yet had an accident this summer. I'd say that's pretty impressive, considering I failed my driver's test three times...)

A day in the life.

7:30 AM - Alarm goes off. Snooooooooze.

8:10 AM - Panic and drag myself out of bed. I've got a 9:30AM airport pickup, and I need to drive over to the house to make sure I know where I'm taking the guest artist.

8:25 AM - Scramble downstairs, throw bread into the toaster, slather it in peanut butter, and scramble into my car.

(Speaking of my never-ending car saga, I now have a new one! Well, sort of. The festival owns a ginormous bright red 1995 Chevy Suburban that they had put at the airport for a guest artist to drive around in the winter, but when the guest artist arrived, it was no longer there. Whoops. Unfortunately for me, though, it turned up a few weeks ago, and I had to return my shiny new Trailblazer for this 35-gallon-tank guzzler.)

8:40 AM - After making a few wrong turns, I arrive at 184 Mountain Valley Dr. I make sure the key is under the mat and open the door. Holy moly the place is ginormous and gorgeous. Oh my goodness.

9:00 AM - Make it through the morning traffic to the airport. I run into Jessica, another of my fellow artist liaisons, who's picking up Misha Dichter. However, we can't seem to find his flight on the monitor. We check with a United attendant and find out he's on a later flight - the same one that James Conlon, whom I'm picking up, is on.

9:32 AM - United flight 7181 arrives from Denver. Jessica and I stand by the gate holding our signs. I feel like a hotel chauffeur...which I guess I am. Sort of.

9:50 AM - We pick up James Conlon's rental car, but his luggage hasn't made it here yet. Oh, Aspen. Julia Fischer had the same problem when she arrived last week, and so did Anders Hillborg, and a long line of others...but oh well - it's scheduled to arrive on the next flight, which thankfully is less than an hour away. We depart and I lead him to his house.

10:14 AM - I show James into his mansion that the festival's rented for his stay here. We take a walk around and oooh and ahh at everything. The house is actually two houses in one, and every detail - from the marble countertops to the giant vaulted ceilings in the master bedrooms (yes, rooms plural) - is gorgeous. I told him that if he ever wants a break from the house during his three-week stay, I'd be happy to take over. He tells me that if I were to live in this house, he probably wouldn't even notice.

10:34 AM - I depart from the James Conlon mansion and make my way over to where David Robertson and Orli Shaham were staying. David and Orli showed up last week with their entourage of eight: the husband-wife team, their nine-month-old twins, David's two teenage sons, a nanny, and a cute little Chihuahua named Milo. Orli called last night and they apparently had a lot of leftover diapers and baby toys and wanted to donate them to the common good (i.e. other festival "brats," as we affectionately call the children and grandchildren of the guest artists), so I was going to load up the 'burban with all their excesses and tote them back to campus.

10:36 AM - Jessica calls. Apparently Misha Dichter needs a ride from his practice room in Aspen Middle School to his hotel at 11:30, and Jessica's picking up Joyce Yang from the airport at that time. I add it to my schedule.

10:37 AM - I realize that while talking to Jessica on the phone, I miss the turn to get to the Robertson/Shaham residence.

10:52 AM - All diapered and ready to head back to campus.

11:11 AM - I finally arrive in the office to unload the toys and the diapers. I flag down potential carters.

11:31 AM - I pick up Misha Dichter from the middle school, who claims that he'll collapse if he practices any more. Poor guy had a concert last night, followed by a post-concert dinner, and then a 6AM flight out of Chicago. And he still needs to get used to the altitude. I take him to Hotel Jerome, and on the way he tells me about how Aspen's changed in the past 30 years (apparently it wasn't always this schmancy), and gives me a few restaurant recommendations.

11:55 AM - I hustle over to Paepcke Auditorium for the High Notes lecture that James Conlon is delivering with Alan Fletcher, President and CEO of the Aspen Music Festival and School. We've all got Alan's title memorized like clockwork because he often makes short speeches at the beginning of each concert, always starting with the words "Hi, I'm Alan Fletcher, President and CEO..." High Notes lectures are a way for the audience to get more acquainted with the music that we present, but on a much more general scale rather than specific to each program. For instance, today's lecture was about the role of myth and legend in music, and to get to that, they first discussed music and the orchestra as a cultural vehicle, and moved to composition and circumstance. It was really interesting to hear the two of them talk, although...

12:22 PM - I get a call from Shelby, the Music Production Manager, that Emanuel Ax was not yet there for his 12:15 conductor-soloist meeting with David Zinman. Even more strange was that the meeting was not in his itinerary, although I distinctly remember putting it in there. I get a momentary feeling of dread as I realize that I had forgotten to sync the pdf with the updated word document. Sh**t.

12:43 PM - I work things out with Manny Ax and he gets to his meeting, albeit a tad late. Whoops. We all decide to avoid both him and David Zinman for the rest of the day...or at least for a few hours.

12:56 PM - I drive back "home" to make myself a super-omelette for lunch: broccoli, mushrooms, turkey, zucchini, and hot sauce, with toast. Yum.

1:30 PM - Time to mosey back to the office, where the rest of the day will be filled with joyful itinerary-making, interview-scheduling, and procrastination. Oh, and all sorts of logistics for Open Door, which is a recital series that I'm coordinating. The first one is tomorrow, and I need to finalize the program, notify the performers, make the program (and get it proofed), and also work out all the logistics for the other recitals on Friday and Saturday evening. Oh boy.

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6:10 PM - Time to go home! Jessica and I are the last ones in the office, and we set the alarm as we walk out. I wanted to go to the Aspen Concert Orchestra performance, which started at 6, but, well, it's a little late now. Instead, I go home and make myself a scrumptious dinner.

7:18 PM - Fooooood: basil shrimp pasta with assorted veggies. Yum! I switch on Law and Order and chow down.

8:21 PM - I finish doing the dishes, hop on my bike, and head over to Harris Concert Hall for the Cavani String Quartet performance at 8:30. They're a dynamic group, and were students at the Center for Advanced Quartet Studies here in Aspen in 1984. We hear three pieces: Dvorak American, Bartok 2, and the Schumann Piano Quintet with pianist Ann Schein. I didn't really enjoy their Dvorak - I thought they took a few too many liberties with the sporadic tempo changes - but the other pieces were excellent!

10:30 PM - I bike home in the pitch black darkness. Oy. No streetlamps = kind of scary.

10:45 PM - I get home, hop in the shower, surf around on the internet, and then decide to write my blog entry as my eyes try to force themselves shut. I'm so ridiculously tired; my pictures are going to have to wait until tomorrow.

12:30 PM - Bedtime! Things to look forward to tomorrow: Cho-Liang Lin's violin masterclass, first Open Door Recital, calling the grocery store to see if they can make a fruit and cheese platter for Sarah Chang, and making the weekly fruit basket delivery chart. Yay.

Things I learned this past week

1. Cellist David Finckel, of the Emerson String Quartet, travels so much with his cello that it has its own series of frequent flier cards, under the name Cello Finckel.

2. David Finckel's wife, the pianist Wu Han, is actually not as intimidating as she seems in all her press photos. When I picked them up at the airport, she was absolutely nice and charming and even gave me a hug when I left.

3. The pianist Richard Goode is mostly a vegetarian. He and his wife Marcia met while performing the Franck Piano Quintet together, although Richard's not a fan of the first movement (he finds it a bit gushingly excessive). Also, although his contract says that he's supposed to have apple juice in his dressing room, he actually prefers orange juice.

Richard at his piano selection (they usually have 2-3 instruments to choose from)

With Richard and wife Marcia backstage after the concert

4. Violinist Ed Dusinberre of the Takacs Quartet is an avid soccer fan. The other day, he showed up at rehearsal and immediately mumbled that he was 10 minutes into an amazing soccer game (Russia v. Netherlands). "Oh, the sacrifices we make for art."

5. Jeffrey Kahane is actually really short. Actually, so is David Zinman. Hrm.

My days lately have consisted mostly of going to rehearsals and performances, which has been worlds better than sitting in front of a computer screen all day. For those of you who want to follow along, we're actually streaming the first ten days of the festival online at Medici TV. It's pretty cool, but it's also been a bit nerve-wracking these past few days, setting up interviews and wrangling backstage controls and such.

One last photo: me and composer and Harvard alum and former BachSoc conductor John Harbison! The Aspen Festival Orchestra just premiered his piece Suite from the Great Gatsby, after Harbison's opera, last night.

And the masses descend upon us

I swear, the population of Aspen has quadrupled in the past week. What were once quaint streets now teem with cars, bikes, and plenty of hazardous pedestrians. The Food and Wine Classic has brought fireworks, mouth-watering smells, and thousands of foodies from the pros such as Bobby Flay to the amateur upper-class connoisseur (I say upper-class because, well, let's just say the cheapest ticket for a few morsels of high-end deliciousness runs somewhere around $300.). In addition, the music festival's 750+ students have all mostly arrived in the past three days, not to mention the beginning of the summer tourist season - this is probably the first of many times I will mention this summer how much I utterly despise driving.

Oh, to be young again...

But at least I got a new car! Yes, it's a shiny 2008 Chevy Trailblazer, quite a nice contrast to the pre-1997 Previa that I had. That said, I still prefer biking and walking. The festival owns about 300 bikes that they dole out on a first-come first-serve basis, and I've been dallying my way around town and the trails. A few days ago, I hiked around Maroon Lake and saw the famous Maroon Bells; two days ago I hiked my way up Aspen Mountain, and just a few hours ago, I made my way up the rocky cliffs surface of Red Butte.

The Maroon Bells as seen from Maroon Lake

A panoramic view of Aspen from the top of Aspen Mountain

The sunset from Aspen Mountain

Another view of Maroon Bells from the top of Red Butte

Red Butte

The physical activity is a nice therapy for all of the menial office work that I've been doing thus far. Perhaps I've just never really been exposed to the amount of compiling/photocopying/collating/stapling that goes on in the real world - I mean, I have been shut away in labs and classrooms (and the occasional fancy wedding or party violin gig) for most of my improperly short money-making career. We've so far been taking rehearsal and performance information entered into ArtsVision, our nifty database, and been formatting the information into an itinerary on a Word document. After a few rounds of proofing, we print the itineraries and distribute them to about 15 different people. It's times like these where I wonder why the festival didn't just hire a compsci nerd who could create a button that would automatically format the information that's already in ArtsVision into an itinerary. That way, they could totally cut down on the number of summer staff that they needed, and save a whole ton of money every year providing housing and compensation for everyone. Oy.

All in all, though, it's been great. I love being paid to be out here, and once the artists get here, it'll be like we're getting paid to attend all these world-class concerts and rehearsals of some of the world's most famous musicians (for all you fans, Joshua Bell arrived this afternoon). We actually had our first airport pickup yesterday - Anders Hillborg (more like Ahnduhz Heelbourg - gotta put on that thick Swedish accent!) arrived yesterday on his heavily delayed flight with his wife and son. Jessica, another Artist Liaison, and I met them at the airport, helped them file a missing bag report when one of their suitcases didn't show up, helped them get a rental car, and took them to their condo. It was cute - they asked about breakfast places, tennis courts, and all those other semi-random necessities of life.

Finally, a quick word about the weather: Wednesday morning it snowed. Not just a few flakes falling on your jacket, but full-service flurries. Midday, with the sun shining, it was probably 80 degrees. This morning they opened up the ski slopes on Aspen mountain. My roommate went snowboarding in her swimsuit. And we all thought Cambridge was quirky.

"The rest of the economy doesn't really affect Aspen."

Such were the words of wisdom spoken to me by Asadour, the Artistic Administrator at the music festival, on one of my first days here. We were driving through the town and he pointed out some of the houses along the streets, citing how much each of them cost. It was ridiculous. I'm currently living in a two-bedroom duplex that I'm sharing with one other person. It's a really nice, quaint little place in a quiet part of town. The thing is, though, when it comes down to it, the place nowadays would sell for at least $1.2 million. That's, umm, about 4x as much as my own house in the Chicagoland suburbia would cost, and it's also about 4x the size of this place. Eeks. Next to the Hamptons, Aspen is the most popular vacation destination of the rich and famous. Many of them own giant houses here that they only occupy for 2 weeks out of the entire year. The streets downtown are lined with stores such as Burberry, Prada, Gucci, and Ralph Lauren. And the cars - loads of BMWs, Ferraris, and the like.


Which brings me to my own car. The festival has provided me a car for the summer, and the car I'm currently driving is a hulking Toyota Previa. They stopped selling Previas in the US in 1997, if that gives you an idea of how ancient it is. I had my first minor panic attack on Friday when the key woudln't turn in the ignition. All you experience drivers are probably rolling your eyes going, well, duh, your wheel's locked - just jiggle it while trying to turn the key. But I went to a boarding school, extra-long summer camps, and then got sent straight to college. At any rate, this is my summer to get acquainted with all those life skills that I never really had a chance to use: driving, cooking, not working in a bio lab...


This is probably my only real weekend, since once the festival starts we'll be working round the clock. It's been quite enjoyable - yesterday Manasseh and I explored Glenwood Springs, a town about 40 miles away that actually has a decently-sized and not-as-overpriced grocery store, and today a few of the other interns and I are heading over to Snowmass for the Chili Pepper and Brew Fest. (Well, actually, I'm the only intern who's not actually old enough to legally drink. But the chili should be good!) Afterwards, if it stops snowing (oy), we'll head over to Glenwood Springs again for a soak in the famed hot springs. And then tomorrow, it's back to the glorified secretary-ness of copying and pasting and making itineraries. But the students start arriving on Wednesday, and our first guest artist arrives on Friday! Yep, next week we've got composers Anders Hillborg and John Harbison (a Harvard alum and former BachSoc conductor), pianist Richard Goode, violinist Joshua Bell, to name a few :-).

P.S. We got our business cards and name badges!

The hills are alive...

Well, not quite hills. More like mountains. Giant, imploring green mountains surround the small town of Aspen, Colorado, where I'll be spending this summer. Let's begin with a few points of reference: I was born in urban China, moved to the flatlands of the Midwest at age 3, and have remained there ever since (minus, of course, the current stint in the also relatively flat terrain of eastern Massachusetts). A handy chart, for comparison (information courtesy of Wikipedia):

State	Highest Point (ft.)	Average Elevation
Illinois	1,235	600
Massachusetts	3,487	500
Colorado	14,440	6,800

Aspen itself is at an altitude of about 7900 ft., and you can definitely feel it. My sinuses have been acting up a lot since getting here, and every now and then I suddenly feel short of breath. I'm completely stoked about getting to the hiking trails, but my roommate Manasseh advised me to wait about a week before actually engaging in any sort of real physical activity. Also, another funny thing - even though it's about 80 or 90 degrees by midday in the sun, there's still snow on the ground.

For now, though, I've been spending most of my time at work every day, compiling itineraries, phone and address lists, and all sorts of goodies for the guest artists this summer. As an Artist Liaison, my main responsibility is to make sure that each of the guest artists have an pleasant stay while they're in Aspen. That means making sure that all of their flight/hotel arrangements are in order, configuring all of their transportation, and organizing any dressing or practice room reservations and requests. The festival doesn't officially start until the week after next, though, so right now I'm just a glorified secretary to people liks Richard Goode, Gil Shaham, Joshua Bell, Marin Alsop, and even Condoleezza Rice (who was once a piano student at Aspen). Yes, that means that I'll actually be calling some of them on their personal cells. And yes, we do gossip about who's more high-maintenance than others. But no, unfortunately, I'm not allowed to share that information with any of you.

The cutesy, picturesque building in which I spend my days.

Still to come: Aspen's freakishly expensive economy, the ups and downs of not having HUDS around, and the joys of Microsoft Outlook. Stay tuned!