You are your own Esteemed Bungalow Manager

My apologies for not updating the blog last night! I didn't think that it would be a big deal, because I was sure that no one would check in to read it between last night and this morning, but I was wrong. Grandma Bergman was disappointed this morning at breakfast because she starts every morning by checking in with us on the blog. So for all you early birds, I'm very sorry.

Not to worry, we did in fact make it safely to Ney, Ohio last night around 10pm. Yesterday morning, Ben was nice enough to wake up early and go out on a donut run so that we would have a sweet start to the day. We said our goodbye's to Ben and Roger Williams and then we were off on the longest leg of the tour. There's not a whole lot to report from our time on the road. Pennsylvania once again took forever to drive through, but it was far more pleasant with company than it was by myself. We ate some hippie gummy fruit snacks from Whole Foods that had a strange texture and were shaped like little bunnies.

The drive made for some excellent sister bonding time between Ruth and I. We talked, laughed, listened to music, and did some Mad Libs (we will give highlights from those later). We had a really great time on the drive. The only downside was all the construction along the way.

When we pulled up in front of Grandma and Grandpa Bergman's house last night, they were having a little party! We were greeted by our aunt Barb and uncle Tom outside the house, and uncle Jerry was hanging out inside. It was great to see everybody!

We are famous in Defiance because we were on the front page of the newspaper! Grandpa showed us the paper last night. So we're hoping to have a good audience for our concert tonight. If we're lucky, it won't just be people we're related to at the concert, but we're happy either way!

I'll make sure to post in the evening from here on out so that our fans aren't disappointed when they wake up in the morning!

Pesto is the Besto!

Ok, this post needs to be short because we've got to get up early and drive to Ohio tomorrow.

Ruth and I played for the church service this morning at First Presbyterian Church in Hartford (Ruth and Ben's church). It was really lovely. There was a guest preacher from Indonesia who was really interesting to listen to speak and was a very nice person. Everyone at the church was very welcoming, friendly, and seemed to genuinely appreciate our musical offering. Plus, it was nice for me to see where Ruth and Ben worship on Sundays.

After some running around, getting lunch etc, we were back at the church to quickly set up for our concert. Despite how warm it was in the sanctuary (it was not air-conditioned) it was a really fun concert to play and the audience was great. Most of the people that attended the concert stayed and talked to us afterward and it was nice to meet everyone, they really seemed to enjoy the music that we played.

It was a pretty good crowd for the concert so it felt really good to play. It was a lovely surprise to see that Mary Coffield and her family showed up to the concert! We weren't sure if they would be able to come since Mary's grandbaby twins are expected to join the world any day now. The babies apparently really liked our music though, they were dancing throughout the concert!

After the concert was over, while Ruth and I ran some errands, Ben was nice enough to make some pesto out of the plethora of Basil leaves they had growing on their porch. Our dinner was a delicious pasta with the fresh pesto, tomatoes, peppers, and mushrooms. Plus it rained in the afternoon, so it was a nice cool evening to enjoy our dinner out on the porch. I took some pictures of our food but it looked kind of gross since it was dark outside when I took them, but here's a picture of the basil plant after it was stripped of it's leaves:

Now we're finishing up our packing (well actually, I'm pretty much packed. Ruth is falling asleep on the couch while I yell at her to get up and go pack), so that we're ready to hit the road first thing in the morning. We're really excited to head off on the more adventurous portion of this tour! Tomorrow night we'll be with Grandma and Grandpa Bergman in Ney Ohio getting ready for our Tuesday evening concert in Defiance. Wish us safe travels!

(Roger Williams doesn't want us to leave without him!)

The Early Bird Gets the Grandma Berries

As promised, Ben made us waffles for breakfast this morning! The house guests from Hartford Phase Shift slept in since they're on a tour of their own. We had some fresh blueberries and some frozen strawberries and peaches that I had brought from Grandma Caryer's house, but there weren't a whole lot of them. I noticed that there were not going to be enough berries from Grandma's for everyone to have some on their waffle, but Ruth and I had already made our waffles complete with berries, syrup, and whipped cream. We were trying to decide if we should feel guilty, but I just said, "Well, the early bird gets the grandma berries" and it was settled. After people woke up much coffee and merriment was had by all.

So I forgot to tell you one of the super exciting things that happened yesterday! The magnet arrived that Ruth and I ordered for my car to advertise our tour! It is totally silly and will certainly not get us any more audience members for our concerts, but it is awesome.

As you can see, we're pretty pumped about the magnet. It should be fun to pull up to a gas station in the middle of Pennsylvania and see if we get any questions about it.

Our concert today was at the Suzuki School of Westport, where Ruth teaches. The audience was great! They were really attentive and the kids all told us after the concert what their favorite part was. A few of Ruth's students were there and they were clearly very excited to see her perform. Two of the students even brought us both flowers!

After the concert, Ben met up with us at a mini golf course called "The Olde Sawmill" where I tried to redeem myself from the last game we all played. I pulled ahead at one point, but then the pressure got to me and I had a few bad holes. Ruth was once again the champion, but I at least managed to tie with Ben for 2nd place.

The mini golf place has a snack bar attached where Ruth was able to introduce me to Clam Rolls. It is a delicious (but horribly fatty) sandwich that has fried clams on a piece of texas toast that you then smother in tartar sauce and lemon. It was really tasty. Here's a picture of our fried platter of food (Ben got a hot dog with saur kraut and bacon on it instead of a clam roll):

I hope you are all enjoying that half of this blog that is supposed to be about Ruth's and my concert tour is about the food we have been eating along the way. It's apparently a very important part of the touring musician's life...when you are a Bergman.

When we got back from our concert/mini-golf/clam roll outing, Ruth and I finished up the programs that we'll bring on tour. Our last Connecticut concert is tomorrow and then we're off to Ohio on Monday! I can't believe we'll already be halfway done with our 8 concerts after tomorrow, it's going by fast!

"I liked the one by that beaver guy"

So many things happened today that we want to tell everybody about!

Our 2nd concert of the tour was at the Children's Community School in Waterbury, CT. We played for a room full of about 50 kids who had just spent the day at the beach. When Ruth introduced the Biber Sonata, the kids got very excited that they were about to hear a piece by Justin Bieber. They recovered from their disappointment when they got to hear all the different animal sounds that we made with our instruments and they got to play the guessing game we made up to go along with the piece. One kid apparently missed the whole exchange about Justin Bieber because when the kids were asked at the end what their favorite part of the concert was, he raised his hand and responded, "I liked the one by that beaver guy." Maybe we should add a beaver movement to the piece. (There was also an incident that Ruth didn't want me to tell you about where a kid named Nicki Minaj as a female composer but Ruth didn't know who that was so she got confused.) We were really excited to play for the kids and they were very attentive and participated well, especially considering how hot it was in the room! We are very appreciative to Calida for organizing the concert and inviting us to play. Here's a picture of us in front of the pictures of the animals for the Biber (/Bieber/beaver) piece:

We went to a restaurant for dinner where there was a kind of crazy old waitress who's name was something like Jemma. Half the time she was working she just stood next to a table on the patio drinking a cup of tea from Dunkin' Donuts.

Then we went to concert number 2 of the day where we got to be in the audience instead of being the performers...or so we thought. The concert was one from a concert series Ben has arranged at La Paloma Sabanera coffee shop. The concert series is called the Hartford Phase Shift . It was an interesting concert that had 3 acts. The first was a trio that played experimental, jazz-inspired sounding music. The second was a crazy awesome grind violin player that played his violin while stomping polyrhythms with his feet while wearing a shaker on his bow arm. The last was a cellist/performance artist. Her first piece was a narrated story that took place in Berlin and before the piece started she asked if anyone spoke German. Since no one spoke up, Ruth reluctantly volunteered her high school German exposure. Half way through the piece, Ruth was dragged on stage, had a mask yanked on over her head, and was told she was supposed to be an angry police officer. She then had to yell in German on command (with no prior warning about what she was supposed to say!) She made up something sort of German...more like GermEnglish. It was hilarious though, and the audience got a kick out of it. I got a sort of blurry picture of it (I didn't want to use flash).

Half of the performers, including the one that got yelled at in German by Ruth, are now crashing at Ruth and Ben's house. They're pretty cool and apparently Ben agreed to make us all waffles for breakfast!

1 Down, 7 to Go!

Sitting down to write this blog post, Ruth and I are relieved and very pleased to have played our first concert tonight. It went very well and we got good responses from the small, yet enthusiastic audience. I'm pretty sure the concert went so well because we were wearing these:

The hours leading up to the concert were mildly eventful. We had a touch-up rehearsal in the early afternoon. We must have been a little out of sorts because we kept dropping things and couldn't get our music in order. We needed to run through the Biber Sonata one more time and there is a movement in which I put a strip of paper in the strings to sound like a snare drum. It turned out that the paper was a little too short, and I hadn't rigged it quite correctly, because half way through the movement I stopped and Ruth said, "the paper disappeared!" I looked down sadly and said quietly, "it is in my cello..." The strip of paper had made its way out of the strings and had fallen into the cello through the f-hole. Picture the following scene:

Leah holding the cello over her head, trying to position the paper near the f-hole. Ruth is kneeling underneath with tweezers trying to extract the paper. It was like musical "Operation".

Eventually, we managed to get it out, and subsequently figured out a more secure way to position the paper. Luckily, there were no malfunctions during the concert tonight.

After we finally got the paper situation sorted out, Ruth asked me if I smelled smoke. I did, but thought it wasn't a big deal so we continued practicing. A couple of minutes later the smell had intensified so much that we thought that the apartment building was on fire. We quickly started running around trying to figure out where the smell of smoke was coming from and discovered that there were fire trucks and police cars down the street along with a large plume of smoke. We still don't know what's going on, but the street is still blocked off. Maybe we'll be able to provide details tomorrow. We are relieved that Ruth and Ben's house didn't catch fire though.

(Update: We were relieved to find out that no one was hurt in the fire. http://westhartford.patch.com/articles/fire-raging-at-multi-family-home-on-prospect-avenue)

After the concert, Ruth and I congratulated ourselves with a glass of wine.

Now, after a late dinner of Hawaiian pizza, oatmeal cookies, and writing this post, we're pretty tired and ready to head off to bed. We're looking forward to playing for a group of 50 kids tomorrow afternoon - it should be a fun concert!

Only the Tastiest of Clams for Sister Leah

What a productive day Ruth and I had today! Which is good, because it dawned on us that starting tomorrow we are going to be playing a lot of concerts over the next 11 days. This is what our schedule looks like for the epic adventure we are about to embark upon:

Thursday, July 12, 7:00 pm, concert

West Hartford, Connecticut

Friday, July 13, 3:00 pm, concert

Waterbury, Connecticut

Saturday, July 14, 3:00 pm, concert

Westport, Connecticut

Sunday, July 15, 3:00 pm, concert

Hartford, Connecticut

Monday, July 16, Drive to Ohio!

Tuesday, July 17, 7:30 pm, concert

Defiance, Ohio

Wednesday, July 18, Drive to Wisconsin!

Thursday, July 19, 1:30 pm, concert

Manitowoc, Wisconsin

Thursday, July 19, approximately 4:00, Drive to Minnesota!

Friday, July 20, 7:00 pm, concert

Richfield (Minneapolis), Minnesota

Saturday, July 21, Drive to Western Iowa! Go to a wedding! Drive to Iowa City!

Sunday, July 22, 3:00 pm, Last concert!

Iowa City, Iowa

Monday, July 23-Thursday, July 27, Relax!

(If you would like locations and/or more information on these concerts, see our tour website at http://www.sorelladuo.info/tour.html)


So, realizing that the beginning of the tour was imminent, the natural next step was to buy sparkly shoes to wear for our concerts. After this most important of tasks, however, we got to work rehearsing and polishing up the most demanding repertoire for the concerts. Here we are, hard at work:

After all this hard work, we rewarded ourselves with an awesomely delicious and wholesome meal. We bought a dozen little neck clams (which I had never heard of, but I just now read about them on this website: http://www.wisegeek.com/what-are-littleneck-clams.htm) and cooked them in a sauce of chicken broth, beer, garlic, lemon,  parsley, and onion. To accompany these delicious mollusks, we had farmer's market green beans and a salad full of fresh veggies. Here's a picture of our feast:

It may not look as delicious as it was, but, particularly when you are from the Midwest, it doesn't get much better than  fresh seafood in New England. Ruth thought that this batch of clams was the best she had ever made, and I said it was clearly because she knew that only the most delicious of clams were destined for her sister, Leah. I was so delighted by the clams (which were dipped in the sauce and butter) that I wished that we had more than 12. To our delight, we discovered that the grocer had given us a baker's dozen! So I got to have one last clam that was the tastiest of all.

After our super satisfying dinner, Ruth's friend Sarah came over to hear us play through the Martinu duo. She was nice enough to be our test audience and give us some very helpful feedback. Now we're just tying up some loose ends and then we're off to bed to get our beauty sleep before our first concert tomorrow! We've got to look well-rested and pretty so that we match our sparkly shoes!


Wish us good luck as we start our concerts tomorrow! Hope to see many of you somewhere along the journey! (Don't worry, if you can't come, I'll let you know how the concerts go here on the blog).

Taskmaster

A conversation between Leah and Ruth Bergman about the happenings of the day:

Ruth: What did we do today?...
Leah: We woke up and practiced Huapangos (pieces for our concerts)
Ruth: That is true, but first we drank my delicious cold brew coffee. And when we practiced the Huapangos we had the benefit of a special program designed by Ben Klein to help us with accurate rhythms in mixed meters. The program was called "Taskmaster"
Leah: Oh yeah, that was super helpful. It's nice to have such a smart composer/computer techy wiz in our presence. Good thing you married him, so he could help us practice for our tour.
Ruth: ...and also write a piece for us. But seriously, it's too bad we didn't have "Taskmaster" when we were children.
Leah: Then we ate lunch and went shopping for clothes to wear on our tour so that we look pretty.
Ruth: ...and we will.
Leah: After shopping, Ruth told me that we would go to this crazy grocery store called...
Ruth: Stew Leonard's...is there an S at the end? It might just be Leonard...
Ben: ...Yes, there's an S. I think it's an apostrophe S.
Ruth: Yes, there's an apostrophe S as confirmed by the website. I hope people enjoy reading this disaster of a blog post. You can say that if you want, Leah, or you can leave it out. You have editorial privileges.
Leah:...............We went to Stew Leonard's. It is like the IKEA of grocery stores. But with animatronic farm animals. Like this cow that moo's when you press a button

Leah: Apparently, her name is Clover. I just noticed that. Oh also, Ruth promised that there would free samples
Ruth: Because there always are free samples!
Leah: But there weren't any! And it was really sad. But after you pay for your groceries, there is a place where you can get soft-serve ice cream or frozen yogurt and Ruth bought me a coconut/mango swirl frozen yogurt cone and it made up for the fact that there were no free samples. My sister is really nice.
Ruth: that's very nice, it was the least I could do. Actually, the least I could do would be to not buy you ice cream and take you home. And feed you water and gruel.
Leah: I suppose that's true. I'm glad that you don't do the least that you can do. Also, that we don't live in the screenplay of Oliver Twist. What did we do after Stew Leonard's?
Ruth: Then we practiced for a while. And then...(trails off)
Leah: We practiced for a pretty long time and it was pretty good. Then we to a late dinner of Mexican food.
Ruth: We took you to the finest Mexican restaurant that Hartford has to offer.
Leah: It's named Coyote Flaco. Which I find quite humorous because it means "skinny coyote".
Ruth: I find it quite delicious because it means "I am full of Mexican food".
Leah: Right. It was awesome.

(That's pretty much all for today, but here's a picture of the dining room table last night after Ruth and I toiled away at putting our music in binders)