Tuesday, May 19, 2009

Away to Italy!

I'm away in the UK, and off to Italy on tour with an orchestra tomorrow. I cannot possibly name the orchestra, since the last visit to Italy resulted in the whole orchestra being banned from a hotel.

The players' contracts are fairly stiff this time - much like the talking to we all got last time, when 'a person of great authority' flew out especially to give it. '...Most of you are professional musicians embarking on your careers, and I can stop these careers dead in their tracks'. Imagine having nothing better to do than to fly out to Ravenna, and give a telling off to a young(ish) orchstra. Lovely man, great preparation for the televised concert. Maybe he'd've been better off working out why the television company didn't pay the orchstra fees (maybe it's because it was for the Easter Sunday broadcast, and he felt religious).


This tour's players' contract says that the hotel bar is out of bounds, and that any more than 3 people in a room is classed as a party. I'm sure that these clauses will pose a large problem to those who would like to have a party, given that it's 30 degrees outside (86 for the Yanks) and the bar lined sandy beach stretches for miles.

But, the reputation of the orchestra thankfully wasn't sullied by the previous visit. The posters proudly stated that we were the London Symphony Orchestra*.

* don't bother trying to sue the organisers - they no longer exist!

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