Murphy's Law

A great tour has come to its end. It does not always go according to plan: The concert in Cambridge, which was supposed to be the big finale of a great tour, came along with a few surprises.

Having worked perfectly fine during the rehearsal three hours before, the digital organ suddenly broke down during the concert.

Critic Andrew Meredith from Cambridge News writes:
"Suddenly there is a gap in the smooth texture, and there is a splatter of undistinguishable sound. I whisper to my friend: ‘I think that was a mistake’. Little did I know, these tiny ‘splatters’ were the result of a monumental technical fault with the digital organ. The climax (or anti-climax) of this mistake was the beginning of the fourth movement, the Maestoso. This is supposed to be a life-altering triumph of organic sound, but instead the audience is greeted – in complete silence – with a splatter resembling the ding on a microwave."

At about the same time, one of the strings of our concert master's violin broke. He quickly exchanged instruments with the second chair and went on playing. These things are hard to control, but they happen, especially on tour, when instruments are exposed to changes in temperature and humidity, or when you are forced to play another instrument in every new city, which was the case for our organist.

But things went wrong backstage as well: While setting up the podium, our stagehand Staf Pypen lost (in his own words): 'a contest headbanging against a 26-inch timpani' while trying to lift it up onto the podium. These instruments weigh about 90 kilo's. Heaven thanks his injury is not too serious, but the huge bruise
above his left eye gave our team a hell of a shock this morning when he entered the office at Brussels.

Nevertheless we enjoyed the tour a lot. The organisation was flawless: thanks once more to Fiona, Chrissy, Ron and Collin from IMG for the administrative support. Many thanks to our bus drivers Glenn and Wayne. And last but not least: thanks to our soloists Oliver Condy, Alexander Sitkovetsky,  Miloš Karadaglić and Noriko Ogawa, we enjoyed sharing the podium with you.

We hope that our audiences enjoyed the concerts as much as we did, and we are very much looking forward to returning to London in October 2015!