During my next to last week at Meadowmount this summer, I received an email from Portland Youth Philharmonic saying that I was going to again play the first movement from Lalo’s Symphonie Espagnole as a part of PYP’s performance at the Waterfront Concert! My mom sent me the music and score, and I started to review it as it had been several months since I had worked on it.
The Waterfront Concert is the season opener for the Oregon Symphony, and PYP normally does the pre-concert. Last year, the mayor made the unconscionable decision to cut spending for the Waterfront concert, and so this year, in honor of its reinstitution, the concert was an especially long one, beginning at 2:00 and featuring many other groups such as BRAVO Youth Orchestra and the Metropolitan Youth Symphony. I performed the Lalo with PYP at approximately 5:30, just when the heat of the day was at its climax. The stage was directly facing the sun, and it was extremely hot. The heat played more with my concentration than it did with my physical comfort, which actually ended up to be more deadly than sweaty hands or tension. Overall, the performance went quite well and was really fun. It was also the largest audience I have ever performed for, numbering upwards of 7,000 people, and the view from the stage looking out over the river was gorgeous.