Wow again. What an amazing experience! Enthusiastic audiences everywhere we went, fascinating “full immersion” cultural experiences led by locals, as well as some plain old touristy stuff.
Here are some final notes about our last couple of days of touring ... .
For our last day in Skopje, several different packs of us took the opportunity to have another throw at the Turkish bazaar while others hung tight in the air conditioned comfort of the hotel. (I haven’t yet mentioned that, yes, it is also hot in Skopje in July – daytime highs in the mid 40s Celsius.)
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| Skopje Bazaar Streetscape |
Our final, formal (scheduled) performance was last night at the Suli An temple in the heart of the bazaar. The acoustics were very good and it was not really breezy, so our music stayed put. It had even cooled off enough such that I did not need to keep towelling off between entrances, to prevent the mouthpiece from slipping off my face. The organizers brought in many, many chairs, but it ended up being a standing-room-only show, with the audience again leaping to their feet after the final number. I get the feeling that we are tapping into a cultural deeply rooted “orchestral music gene”, perhaps similar to Canadians’ oft-cited affinity for hockey. One of the reasons for the tour’s popular success, I think, has been our intentional merging of accessible, traditional orchestral works with local folk songs and new progressive music such as that composed and performed by Music Progressive Quartet. After the concert, I met briefly with Mirko Stefanovski, the Director of the Skopje Summer Festival, to whom I was introduced when I visited the country last year. He was extremely happy with the orchestra, the attendance and the atmosphere.
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| Before the concert at Suli An |
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| The view from the back of the orchestra |
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| The crazy people who started all this: From left: Vlad Lazarevski of MPQ, Mirko Stefanovski (Director of Skopje Summer Festival) and myself |
As great as the concert was, the memories of this night had only started to be formed. We came back to the hotel to a wonderful cocktail reception, replete with a trio of Macedonian musicians (violin, accordion and guitar) who serenaded us with folk songs. I was joined by some of my Ernst & Young colleagues - it was great to make still more international connections. We briefly interrupted the folk music festivities to express (certainly inadequately) our gratitude for the amazing experience we had in Macedonia. We presented the members of MPQ with some West Coast Symphony branded water bottles and a golf shirt as small remembrances of our time together.
The evening really got going when the traditional dancing broke out. All of the members of MPQ jumped onto the open patio area and tried their best to lead us in traditional Macedonian circle dancing which involves three steps to the right, a pause and one step to the left (rinse, repeat, do the hokey pokey ...). I think it would be very easy for an onlooker to discern who was Canadian and who was Macedonian, just by looking at the speed and fluidity of the footwork. It was a night that ended sometime barely short of sunrise and is yet another lifetime memory for us all.
After a short sleep for some of us, the bus left the hotel in the late morning, bound for Tirana, with a scheduled stop in Ohrid. Ohrid has captured our curiosity, as it seems every Macedonia person we have met has asked if we are going there. Based mostly on that urging, we scheduled about an hour and a half to see for ourselves. As described by Elizabeth, we had a wonderful meal at a traditional Macedonian restaurant, having phoned in our basic meal requests from the bus in order to maximize our time in Ohrid proper. Ohrid proved to be yet another place to re-visit: a town of 365 churches (one for each day of the year) and often described as the Jerusalem of orthodox Christianity.
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| Macedonian ensemble in Ohrid restaurant |
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| Streetscape in Ohrid |
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| Ohrid Lake |