| |
Concert Tour With A Difference by Tanya Prochazka
String Quartets in the Grand Canyon
Dear reader, before you go any further please log into this website: http://www.onpaws.com/gc2005/
Now, do I need to write anything? Perhaps not.
But…
I guess that you don’t get a sense of how cold the water is,
nor how bright and dense are the stars at night,
nor how much sand and supremely fine red grit embeds itself into every pore and between each tooth,
nor how expert and compassionate and kind and patient and knowledgeable and adventurous and skilled are the 7 river guides who guide us all safely through the womb of the earth,
nor how many clothes pegs you need to hold the music on the music stands during rehearsals and concerts,
nor how reverberant and musically awe-inspiring are the water-hewn rock bowls and dramatically carved side canyons and caves and natural amphitheatres which are our concert halls,
nor how monumental are the giant wave castles in many of the rapids,
nor how glorious the beer that has been dragged behind the boats tastes at the end of a long day of hiking, paddling and playing string quartets,
nor how peculiar it is to apply sun-melted rosin to heat-traumatized bow hair,
nor how normal it becomes squat down to pee into the river whilst carrying on a conversation about geology or fossils or Bach or ants and scorpions with the guy next to you who is also peeing,
nor how those morning of jogging paid off when clambering over boulders and up and along narrow ledges with the cello on my back to play a concert,
nor how excellent and voluminous was the cuisine three times a day, lovingly prepared by our guides/chefs,
nor how a gallon of water a day was only just enough to keep dehydration at bay,
nor how the ever changing and mutating walls of the canyon through which we voyaged could yell their grandeur and eternity so deeply and forcefully into my soul,
nor how much we laughed,
nor how joyously unceremonious it is to be tossed like airplane baggage off the kayak into a rapid by a laughing wave,
nor how much hard work it is to clamber back onto the kayak in a rapid,
nor how truly inspiring it was to play Beethoven, Mozart, Bach, Haydn,
Sibelius, Elgar, Dvorak, Nielsen, Grieg, Schnittke, Prokofiev, Tchaikovsky,
Shostakovich, Brahms, Schumann and Peter Schickele string quartets for our fellow travelers and the insect, amphibian, reptilian, winged and befurred residents of the Canyon,
nor how triumphant we are to have successfully negotiated Lava Falls,
nor how much wind is generated when a huge volume of water cascades 200 feet into a pool at the base of its cliff,
nor how exhilarating it is to paddle the rubber kayak against fierce winds in a torrential thunderstorm where the pounding rain drops bounce up a few inches from the river’s surface,
nor how we merged into a primordial, mutually supporting tribe within a few days of meeting as strangers,
nor how wondrous it is to watch as waterfalls created by the storm breach the crest of the walls above us,
nor how the blood red earth mixes with the rain to fall over the high cliff in a terracotta torrent which changes the Colorado river from green to mud brown,
nor how the turquoise Little Colorado river envelopes us with its warmth and magic,
nor how humbling it is to see the remnants of ancient lives high in the rock ledges and walls,
nor how terrifying it can be to peer over sheer drops to toy boats 100s of feet below,
nor what a privilege it is to be a musician in the Grand Canyon and to be alive in this planet…..
How can you?
Tanya Prochazka
Prof. cello, chamber music, University Symphony Orchestra, Academy Strings Orchestra
University of Alberta
Edmonton, Canada
|
