This post will highlight my whirlwind trip to Strasbourg, France to participate in the International SaxOpen Conference.

Strasbourg was a wonderful host city, and I greatly enjoyed my week’s stay, tramming, walking, and biking throughout the city. From the thousand-year-old cathedral…

…to the quaint tudor-style houses in Petite France…

…to the wonderful traditional Alsace food at Winstub S’kaechele…

…Strasbourg had much to offer the two thousand saxophone (and one didgeridoo player) who attended the six-day conference.

Glen Gillis and I presented two performances. The first was part of the SaxOpen Extended, a fringe festival that was held in a wide variety of venues. We performed Friday evening, July 10th on an intimate stage at Café Libro at the La Maison de l’Amérique Latine de Strasbourg.

The nearly hour-long performance was well attended by members of the general public, as well as well-wishers and curiosity-seekers from SaxOpen. It was our first opportunity to present our digitally-enhanced ambient material to a live and enthusiastic audience.

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Our second performance was Monday, July 13 at the Cité de la Musique et de la Danse (Music Conservatory) in Strasbourg.

Despite the fact that there was no sound engineer present and we had a complicated technical setup, the performance (in my humble opinion) was artistic and well played. After an opening original composition by Glen and his long-time accompanist Bonnie Nichoson, we performed both “Canis Lupi (Grey Wolves)”

and “Aurora Australis (Live)”

Tuesday, Bastille Day was the pièce de résistance, with lots of biking and shopping downtown, all capped off with a fête nationale française fireworks show at the Cité de la Musique.

 Viva la France!

Then an early morning bus ride back to Frankfurt, Germany through the Rheinland…

jousting with some giant wind turbines (at least 100′ tall)

crossed the Rhein River

…and then on my way back to Boca!

I’m off to Strasbourg to play a couple of  concerts at the International SaxOpen Conference and SaxOpen Extended fringe festival with my fellow composer and performance partner Glen Gillis.

 

At the SaxOpen we will be debuting a couple of new pieces and resurrecting a couple of old classics. I am excited about performing “Aurora Australis (live)” where i get to electronically emulate the 45-second reverberation of Ft. Worden cistern in real time. At last, technology has caught up with my creative vision. If you are curious, here is a slightly edited version recorded during a practice session in Saskatoon last month.

Some of our “classic” compositions will include performances of: “Didgeriblu,” and “Canis Lupus,” which were released on Glen Gillis’ Sax Spectrum I & II albums, in 2009 and 2014 respectively.

I have packed a raft of microphones, electronics, and sewerphones for the trip. I wonder why TSA always has a field day inspecting my bags.

I have never been to Strasbourg before, but I understand that it is the capital and principal city of the Alsace region in north eastern France. It is also the official seat of the European Parliament. I will be flying in to Frankfurt, Germany, and taking a three-hour bus ride to Strasbourg just across the border. My return to Germany will undoubtedly bring back fond memories of my tour of duty in Germany with the US Army from 1972-1974. I’ll keep you posted.