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.
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!