Where for art thou, Crimson Tide

Two ensembles, both alike in dignity, in fair Verona...

I hope Shakespeare doesn't mind I changed his story a little. Today we discovered the fourth most popular city in Italy, Verona. As you may or may not remember from you high school english classes, Verona is the home of the tragic lovers Romeo and Juliette.



We met our local tour guides that led us through the old mediaeval town. We started in the arena, a place very similar to the coliseum in Rome except this one is a little smaller and a lot more intact. They still put on a lot of operas and plays in the space and performers like Sting, Elton John, U2, and many others have put on concerts there.

From the arena we made our way to the house of the Capulets and got to see the famous balcony where Romeo came to swoon. It was actually in a very small coutryard that you would recognize if you've seen "Letters to Juliette" As you enter through the archway you see lots of love notes and names with hearts around them graffitied onto the wall. In the courtyard you can look up and see the balcony and for a fee you can even enter the house and go up on to it. There is a statue of Juliette in this small courtyard where the tradition is to rub her right breast for good luck. I don't quite understand why people do this, but there certainly was a long line waiting to cop a feel. My favorite part was the metal gate in the corner of courtyard. fairly unassuming save for the thousands of pad locks placed on the metal bars. It's apparently an old custom for newly weds to lock the locks and then throw the key away. They also place these locks under bridges here and throw the key into the river.






From there we had about an hour to explore and grab some food and of course some gelato before we found our buses and began the track to Torino. We're about 30 minutes outside of the city now and already the view of the Alps is breathtaking. There are snowcapped mountains everywhere that look a lot like the rockies!






Yesterday, as I said, was quite a day!! We woke up and headed into the city center of Padova for the beginning of the parade. We marched down very narrow streets packed with people and tabels from resteraunts. People seemed a little surprised to see a sight like 100 people marching through the streets playing instruments but they enjoyed it and many followed us to a courtyard where we formed onto some steps. Next a traditional Italian band dressed in Rennaisance clothes paraded in to the courtyard. There were about 10 trumpetiers with one valved bugels at least 5 ft. long and around 7-8 drummers playing on period instruments. The most interesting part were the flag boys that each had 2 flags about 3-4 ft. long. As the band played, the flag boys performed very interesting choreography. It was different from what our MDB color guard does but there were a lot of the same things. They threw them high into the air sometimes even exchanging them between each other. They also would spin 3 and even 4 flags at one time, something I've never seen before and the MDB seemed to love every minute of it. Next we played several stand tunes and cheers for the audience, which if you can tell from the pictures I posted was rather large. The entire square was full and there were people hanging out of the windows to get a peak at the band. It was a very cool experience.

Everyone had about 3-5 hours around the city to grab some food and do some shopping depending on which ensemble you were in. The wind ensemble had a nice long rehearsal in the concert hall to get ready for the concert that night. All of the performances in Padova were part of an international music conference held at the music conservatory there. The hall was very intimate and a great place to perform. We played a collection of American music with some pieces by John Williams, a movement from a Symphony by Dacvid Maslanka that used old church hymns, and a piece called "From an Alabama Songbook" that contained a lot of old folk tunes based out of Alabama. The concert went very well and the audience jumped to their feet at the conclussion. We were presented with several gifts to commemorate our performances here and we presented the conservatory with an elephant statue as a sign of our appreciation.

That's the update from the past couple days. We're almost to our hotels now (yes we're slpit into two again) to check in then we're all eating together at a restaurant tonight. Tomorrow I think we're headed into the Alps (approx 6,000ft up to according to our tour guide) for lunch and some sightseeing. Then we all have a rehearsal tomorrow night in preparation for our Final concert on Friday. The MDB will be performing a spectrum-like performance along withn the wind ensemble and the host band.

Only two days left in our time here in Italy. Everyone has had an incredible time and made memories that will last forever. It's kind of sad to see this time coming to an end but we still have some time to enjoy this amazing country!


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