From: Skidmore William
Tue, 20 Apr 2004 10:18:55 -0700 (PDT)
[Ed. note: Following an exchange of email about “where was the
unfinished theater?” (which might have been the Teatro Guaira in
Curitiba, Brazil), Bill contributed this astounding account of
an event that I had completely forgotten about.]
...I remember that concert well. Remember, as we
came to the hall there was a long line -- 3-4 abreast
-- waiting to get into the hall when we arrived, and a
military band was playing for them outside. The
inside of the hall was just a shell with card table
chairs set on the bare concrete floors and single
bulbs hanging from way overhead down to the stage.
There was a triple balcony, and the audience area was
rather dimly lit. I remember that as we launched into
Egmont a loud series of crashing sounds erupted and
military police started running around and shouting
(probably orders) -- some anti-American stuff as well.
It settled down, and we finished the first half.
When the lights came on, we discovered that the ruckus
had been people forcing their way into the third
balcony to see our concert (it had been barricaded
because it was felt that its very steep floor would be
unsafe for people to walk on). I remember people
having crawled out onto the large, steel girders way
up above us (at least 3 or 4 floors up)!
We played the Brahms Symphony II for the first time
there, and it brought thunderous applause at the end.
We ran every encore we had with us there. It was one
of the high moments for me on the trip. Such
wonderful enthusiasm from what must have been a large
group of relatively poor people.
WS+
Mountain flying
From: Skidmore William
Thu, 22 Apr 2004 05:30:19 -0700 (PDT)
...I flew with about 20 others from San Juan (actually
from a nearby city's airport) to Santiago, Chile, on
the "cargo" flight. While most of the orchestra flew
on a Caravelle and made it in 20 minutes or so, we
were on a DC-4 and wound our way through the mountain
passes (we had to turn around in one pass and fly
south to another pass because of cloud cover). It was
a spectacular experience! The Andes mountains were up
as high as we were on both sides of the plane. The
plane wasn't designed to fly quite as high as we had
to go, and the oxygen masks popped out from above.
...The town we flew out of was Mendoza, which is
now becoming quite famous in wine circles for producing
very high quality wines -- many of which are readily available at
least in the L.A. area.
I was on the DC-4 flight with you (I think that all of the
cello, bass, and percussion players were there along with the cargo).
The Andes were actually much *higher* than we were, which was
the problem -- they couldn't make enough altitude to get over the
planned mountain pass, probably because of weight. Due to the
lack of pressure, I got a horrible pain in my ears, and missed the
next two days of concerts. It's bothered me on and off
for flying to this day. The CBS-TV film crew was on
the plane with us -- in their eventual special, the
only sort-of-recognizable picture of me was behind an oxygen
mask! The mask, by the way, wasn't the cute little
yellow-cup/elastic-band/plastic-bag one that we know from
pre-takeoff briefings today -- it
was a genuine World War II-issue monstrosity (as was the
airplane itself).
Tom
Tucuman
From: Skidmore William
Wed, 28 Apr 2004 05:56:36 -0700 (PDT)
I think it was Tucuman -- we were flying into one of
the Argentine towns and it was announced on the plane
that there were two hotels in town -- one nice one and
the other not so. The guys would have to "rough" it
again. A groan went up, and some of the girls said
they could tough it for a change, so it was decided
that the guys would get the "nice" place and the girls
would get the other. When we got there, the "not-so"
place was right across the street, and it looked quite
nice -- wood lattice work around a quaint balcony
around the building.
At dinner that evening it was announced that the girls
would appreciate an escort to their rooms. I remember
taking Jeanie Wilson over there, walking up to the
desk, and the clerk presented me with a key before I
said what room she needed. It turned out that the
girls were staying in the local brothel! As I recall,
no one seemed to have any trouble, but it was good for
a laugh.
Was it there that there was a big gambling casino on
the main floor of our hotel? I also remember seeing a
huge cockroach in that hotel as well.
WS+
May Wine Festival
From: Dean M Wade
Fri, 6 Aug 2004 17:41:44 -0400
One of many stories that I remember was the May Wine Festival shown in one of the
pictures. We had quite an adventure finding the ingredients to make the
May Wine. A good Rhein-style local Riesling wasn't too hard to find, nor
were the Brandy or 'Champagne', and there was plenty of wonderful
freshly-baked bread and great cheese, but the Waldmeister was a
non-starter, and Strawberries were out of season. However, a couple of
years earlier, Stutsman and I had done some research in the process of
trying to find Waldmeister / Woodruff in C-U, and discovered that the major
flavoring ingredient was vanillin, a major ingredient of, strangely enough,
Vanilla. So we found some vanilla beans, substituted Apples for the
Strawberries, and things worked out pretty well. I remember we conned a
couple of the bus drivers into taking us out to a lovely spot in the
country -- a clearing near a charming brook. There are many tales from the
festival itself, but the one which is burned (heh heh) into my memory is a
vision of Fred Hazard (aka Mike Combs), who had climbed a tree to see a bit
better. Some other folks had built a bonfire, and as Mike was sitting on
one of the branches, folks fed the fire so that from some angles, the fire
seemed to be licking at his feet (really not at all that close, but ...),
and it seemed quite natural that many of the Orchestra started singing
themes from 'La Triunfa de Santa Juana' which we had played the night
before. All in all, a lovely day off.
Politics
From: Dean M Wade
Mon, 9 Aug 2004 15:33:45 -0400
Politics were very important to many of the students (and others) we met on
the tour. Two instances stand out in my memory.
In Venezuela as we were traveling about with several Venezuelan
students on one of the many INCRET (Instituto por la Capacitacion y
Recreacion de los Trabajadores) busses, we were having conversations in
mixed Spanish and English. Some of the pronunciation on both sides of the
opposite language was, shall we say, somewhat unique, and led to some
interesting misunderstandings which tended to show what was most on
someone's mind. We had been discussing the recent election and the
upcoming inauguration of the new president who, if I remember correctly,
was of the Copei party (pronounced Co-pay) but often mispronounced by
English-speakers as Co-pie. As you may remember, those busses had a
fold-down seat (for a 'conductor' or tour guide) in the entry stair well.
As part of one of the mixed conversations, someone mentioned the "Co-pilot
seat", and one of the Venezuelans immediately corrected that to Co-pei
(Co-pay), thinking that the Americans must be talking about the main thing
on the Venezuelan mind -- the politics and political parties.
Then there was the night in La Paz when we all saw a series of fires
burning on the high hills outside of town. It looked like a celebration,
and indeed it turned out that it was in a way. A closer look at the fires
through binoculars showed that they were arranged to spell out "Cuba Libre
Socialista", and we were told that it was 'rumoured' that Che Guevara was
in the neighborhood.
Outdoor concert
From: Dean M Wade
Mon, 9 Aug 2004 15:41:36 -0400
One part of my memory says this was in Venezuela in an open air
amphitheatre on the outskirts of Caracas, but looking at the concert
schedule Tom has recreated, the open air concert in La Paz might well be
the venue I am remembering, although I surely thought it was earlier in the
tour than that. At any rate, the venue was on the side of a hill, and a
very pleasant, rather large amphitheatre had been carved out. The place
was packed full, with many standing as well as sitting on the mostly
earthen banks that served as benches. In the second half of the program,
while counting one of those interminable 674-bar rests that percussionists
regularly encounter, I noticed a young lad riding a horse across the top of
the theatre, at the back but well within the earthen walls. He stopped
somewhere around the center and sat astride his horse for a while,
listening, and then meandered off out the other side. Really al fresco, I
guess.
[Ed. note: I've got a picture of the LaPaz venue, and it doesn't seem
to have the earthen banks that Buck is talking about. Caracas was before
I got there, so I'd go with his memory of it.]
Bogota arrival
From: Tom Jewett
Sat, 11 Dec 2004 22:38:00
This is a truly unique, personal experience, but I've got to share it
with you anyway. Unlike everyone else's full-semester preparation for the
tour, I had about a week to get ready for my trip there as a substitute.
Yes, that included all the innoculations (ouch). I remember Mr. Swenson joking
that I might use soap instead of rosin on the bow for the first few concerts
(since I'd be sight-reading everything)!
I arrived in Bogota (from Champaign) on the same day that the orchestra
arrived from Caracas, only several hours later. All of the equipment was
missing from the group flight; my luggage was missing from my flight. Late at
night, by myself in the mostly-deserted airport, I had no idea how to find the
orchestra in a strange city, especially since I didn't know a word of Spanish.
Thank goodness that one of the attendants from my flight came to the rescue,
somehow finding out the hotel (Tequendama) and directing the taxi driver to it.
The real "punch line" here is that when I walked into the hotel after a *long*
day of travel hassles, there in the lobby were my friends -- who didn't seem to
notice that I hadn't been there all along: "Hey, Tom, let's grab a beer!" Thus
my first lesson in Spanish, and an appropriate one for the rest of the
tour: "uno cerveza, por favor!"
Tom
Piano stories
From: Robert Ward
Wed, January 18, 2006 2:03 am
Let me add some addenda to Bill Skidmore's reminiscence re Curitiba:
I remember the town well because it was the only place on the tour that I
could speak semi-fluently with many of the townspeople because so many
spoke German! I recall a wonderful Konditorei with great pastries.
Playing the Barber Concerto that night was a pleasure because of a
particularly fine grand piano, an Essenfelder (a brand unknown to me) that
was supplied. I also remember being startled during the performance when
a cameraman came swooping in on a boom with bright lights while I was
playing. Following the performance a tiny old lady dressed entirely in
black was ushered up with great deference to see me back stage. A
well-dressed and solicitous young man declared in uneasy English "This is
Frau Essenfelder. She wanted to meet you and asks how you liked her
piano." She didn't speak English and I no Portuguese, but when she found I
could speak some German she got quite excited and told me her life story.
It seems her family had a piano factory in Germany prior to World War II.
However, being Jewish her family was forced to flee in the late 30s and
amazingly they succeeded in taking their entire factory and master
craftsmen with them to Brazil. I thought it was a fine piano, similar in
style to the more famous Bechstein pianos of Leipzig. When I expressed my
admiration, she offered to sell me the piano for the ridiculously low price
of $2000. A steal really, but as a student, still impossible. Over the
years, I've thought a number of times about "the piano that got away."
Speaking of a "piano that got away"...almost. In our first concert in
Mexico we took a wild bus ride up to Toluca and played in an old opera
house. I seem to remember funky old round red velvet settees in the lobby
area. But the stage gave true meaning to "up stage" and "down stage"
because the floor was quite tilted. The piano had no locks on the wheels
(few did in those days) and so the piano rolled a bit every time I played.
The more fortissimo the octaves I played, the more it moved. At every
orchestra tutti I had to scoot the piano bench over to my peripatetic
keyboard. By the end of the Barber, the piano had meandered a good 3 or 4
feet "down stage" from its original position. Had we played the 50-minute
Brahms Second Concerto that piano would have ended in the lap of a very
surprised patron in the front row!
Then there was the "piano that DID get away." This was in Tegucigalpa.
The quite nice concert grand was being pushed onto stage for our first
rehearsal and the front caster caught on the metal strip between backstage
and the stage. The front leg buckled under and a poor stagehand had the
entire front end of the 800-pound piano collapse down onto his knees. He
managed to keep it from crashing to the floor and they quickly slid a chair
underneath. We played the rehearsal with the piano tilted at a very odd
angle downwards. Shortly afterwards I saw someone from the consulate with a
welder's tools repairing the broken bracket. I imagine that poor stagehand
had some mighty bruised knees for a while.
Bob
Tegucigalpa
From: Skidmore William
Thu, Feb 14, 2019 9:44 PM
I still look at [the Tour site] every day. What's fun is to call up the
cities we visited to see how much they have changed in the interim years.
...I remember a wonderful German restaurant in Tegucigalpa that Ted Quast
led us to. While we were in Tegucigalpa, a guy invited me to his home for dinner.
He had two other guests -- the only other string players beside himself in
the entire country (except for one violinist who wasn't invited).
There being three violinists and himself, a cellist, and they were wanting
to know about string trios that were available. Seems of the three violinists,
one was willing to play viola, but none was willing to play second violin to
the others or even rotating in that position! The violinists were retired
professionals from Europe, but the cellist was, as he described himself, a rank
amateur. There aren't many trios that he would probably be able to play, as
those cello parts are usually quite difficult.
At any rate, about two years later I received a letter from the guy offering
me a job to teach cello in a music school he was founding there. I was then,
of course, at Maryland University and not much interested in leaving. I
responded to him without enthusiasm, but later in the year he showed up at my
office at Md U. I recognized him, but he had no recollection of my having been
in his home or his having even seen me before. I sure wanted to work for him (not!).
WS+
Encores
From: Skidmore William
Mon, Mar 3, 2019 8:30 AM
[Ed. note: I had asked Bill for help remembering repertoire, and mentioned
that we had played Sousa's “Stars & Stripes Forever” despite
State Department objections—always to enthusiastic applause.]
We ended up closing every concert on the tour with the Stars and Stripes.
I remember very clearly that story, though, so here it is. On our flight
into Caracas, Mr. Butrick [State Dept. liaison] had the word passed back through
the plane that we'd better not use that one for awhile (Central University in
Caracas was a communist hotbed in those days), and I remember boos at the
announcement. When we were on the bus headed from the airport into Caracas we
heard the Stars and Stripes way off in the distance, and it kept getting louder
and louder until a small car with loudspeakers on the roof roared by blaring the tune.
On the side of the car it read, "Vota Communista". I remember shouting
"if they can play it, so can we." And we did. The one time the trombones caught
hell for the piece was when they took some small American flags from the tables at
one of our banquets (Argentina?) and fastened them to their slides during the piece.
We all loved it!
String quartet
From: Skidmore William
Tue, Mar 12, 2019 7:45 AM
The string quartet played in Merida first.
We were introduced by a local who may have spent all of five minutes with us
backstage in an "interview" about us. When we went "on" we were in the Moot
Court room of the law school, and the audience was packed. Behind us was a
table where the USIS guy who was taking us around (guy named McNertney - his
brother was a major league catcher I believe) sat with the governor of the
province, bishop of the church, and a couple of other dignitaries were sitting.
The kid who then introduced us talked for what seemed to us like an
eternity -- probably 20 minutes), comparing us with the Julliard, Budapest, and
virtually every other major string quartet that had existed to that time.
David turned beet red -- we could at least hear all the words ending in "issimo".
Thinking back I believe he thought we were the Walden Quartet, as we did see ads
for them as being the quartet from the U of I.
As a result of that concert, however, the day after the Coro concert, the bishop
of the church, who resided in Coro, sent a car around with a driver, and he
gave us a very extensive tour of the city. Coro is one of the oldest cities
in the Western Hemisphere. I remember we were taken in to one of the oldest
continuously occupied private residences in the Western Hemisphere there.
There were some old oil paintings on the walls, and there was a mosaic in the
floor of the entry that was made of cattle bones. The tour ended at the
Bishop's residence, where he gave us a tour through his personal museum.
He had lots of very old pottery and glassware, and he showed us a gold pen
that had once belonged to the Empress Carlotta (wife of Maximilian, the emperor
of Mexico [under Napoleon III of France]).
Sucre
From: Skidmore William
Tue, May 12, 2020 9:28 AM
I do love following the tour site, and I see that the bus ride is rapidly approaching.
I notice that the Sucre trip was cancelled, but did you know that the string quartet
was flown to Sucre to take the place of the orchestra? We had a lovely flight on a
very nice DC-6, and I believe there was just one or maybe two other passengers on the plane.
I remember several things about Sucre, but perhaps the most interesting was that we
actually stayed in a MOTEL -- just like one in the states. We were entertained at an
America House in the afternoon, and we could pick ripe citrus fruits from the typical
citrus trees in the yard. I don't remember a thing about the concert we played,
but I do remember telling Goodman and Johnson about how nice the airplane was,
which may have had some influence on our successfully arranging to fly back to
La Paz instead of another bus ride. As I recall, the plane ride took about 20
minutes or so!
Sources: email to the editor, 2004–2019. Special thanks to loyal
reader and major story contributor Bill Skidmore for his encouragement during the site re-build!
