I am at London Heathrow airport awaiting my flight home. Even this last morning in London was a whirlwind: breakfast with Christian, a hotel fire alarm, a very entertaining and equally expensive taxi-driver discussion about Obama while watching the changing-of-the-guard band marching by, extravagant tea drunk in more extravagant 300 year-old porcelain, a listening with Mitsuko of the slow movement of Beethoven violin concerto played by Adolf Busch, and finally the ride to the airport. All of that in three hours.

Everybody had the look of having a BBT tour hangover this morning. Or was it an overload of Messiaen and God? I mean, how much transporting to another world could we handle in a week? This whole experience of Messiaen, from the rehearsal period in April through the initial US performances in May to this past week in Europe – it has been completely satisfying, not one ounce too little or too much. One of the miracles of this project was the bridging of the different musical perspectives. You could hardly assemble a group of personalities with such different personal and musical backgrounds:
the one-woman melting pot of a Japanese-born pianist raised in Vienna but adopted by London; the Cadillac-driving Swiss cellist who also studied in Vienna, lives in Belgium, but really wants to be in Mexico this week; the Swedish clarinetist who could be a snake-charmer on rollerskates; and wonderful Llyr who is a caricature of himself, each efficiently-uttered line becoming an instant classic, somehow managing to be reserved and straight to the point at the same time in his Welsh brogue. Throw in the free-swinging Iowa-born Korean-American New Yorker (me) and the carnival was complete.

Franco Buitoni and Ilaria Borletti created the BBT with the specific goal of encouraging younger (allow me refer to myself in this way one last time before returning to my life of helping truly younger people!) artists, and they have already quickly accomplished this with their small army of talent. But the greater effect of their support, whether intended or not, is that each of us gains from these experiences and then goes back to our separate lives spreading the flame with audiences and other musicians. They are providing a gift to the world. Thank you Franco and Ilaria.

What a day.
The Concertgebouw is one of the most special cradles of music in the world. Some halls sound beautiful; others look beautiful. Then there is the inexplicable mystique associated with certain places like Carnegie Hall, Wigmore Hall, the Musikverein, something awe-inspiring about the history of concerts in that particular space; millions, perhaps billions, of notes must have permeated every wall, floor, seat, and the spaces between. The Concertgebouw has all of the above.

We played in the smaller of the two halls which is truly a gem. It is amazing how the hall affects the performance for the performers and the audience. Some halls give us good odds as if we were the home team; others are pitted against us before even a note has been played. Playing at the Concertgebouw is like beginning a game with a three-touchdown lead. Everybody in the group had played in the hall before, some of them countless times. But from the moment we walked into the rehearsal and played the first notes, everybody still marveled at the place. The hall was like a living organism interacting with our sounds and our hearts like that inspiring person who brings out your best qualities.

But our concert was not the headliner of November 4. My good friend John Canning and I will never forget watching the election results at the Amsterdam Hilton, the excitement crescendoing to a climax around 5:30am our time when Obama made his victory speech. I was thrilled to have just played at the Concertgebouw but I would have been just as happy dancing in the streets of Harlem.

Perugia is stunning. I wonder why the rest of the world outside of Italy was ever created when we could eat this pasta and drink this espresso eternally. Both are incomparable. Perhaps Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time was an expression of his longing for this caffeine high. My final Louange of the piece certainly carries me to this state of ecstasy.
Simply to look out my window makes me happy, the pedestrian brick boulevards opening into mini-piazzas with secretive vicoli shooting off in every which way, each one telling its own mysterious story. All-Saints’ Day brings crowds of people to the streets despite the steady drizzle.

Pasta and more pasta. The first time I ordered pizza to diversify my experience, I regretted it as I listened to my colleagues chewing their fresh pasta. At one meal a tasting menu of three pastas, all with very forgettable names but unforgettable flavors.

At the theater in Perugia the dressing rooms must have been built at a time in human evolution when people were six inches shorter. The extra violin in the Bartok threatens to slide right off the chair and into the audience because of the sloping stage; this also results in Mitsuko’s right hand being lower than her left hand on the piano. But the hall sounds wonderful and looks even more magnificent. The screen behind us on the stage is awesome, an enormous tapestry of a crowd that dwarfs and seemingly envelops us.

After the months apart since our performances in May, we are becoming reacquainted with one another on stage, old teammates gauging each others’ timing. There is an occasional blip but the essence of the performance remains the same: a spirit of loving support coming from Mitsuko and the BBT, and a feeling of awe and appreciation from the four of us boys.

Goodbye Perugia, on to Amsterdam!