Lucerne Festival Academy: Episode 2 Luciano Berio's "Coro"

The better you play it and hear it, the more extraordinary it seems; this is one of the masterpieces of music.    -Sir Simon Rattle

The Lucerne Festival episode below is dedicated to the Academy's journey through Berio's Coro leading up to an exciting performance at the KKL Lucerne (some clips from the performance are in the video below).  Welcome to my summer at the Lucerne Festival in Switzerland! It was an absolutely life-changing month for me in August of 2014.  While working on the Coro with a group of fantastic young professional singers and instrumentalists under Sir Simon Rattle, we slowly voyaged through this, dare I say, "beast" of a piece to uncover the "cities of sonorities" within this massive (and sometimes intimidating) landscape. It was technically very challenging, and emotionally very rewarding.

T h e   r i s k - t a k i n g   i s   e s s e n t i a l .   - George Chambers

It was my first time overseas, and MAN did I have it good in Switzerland. I really do miss waking up every day in a place so foreign to me, yet that somehow felt like home -  a place with such gorgeous history in the streets, traditions, culture and buildings, and yet the air and vibe was overwhelmingly welcoming. I also miss my hard-working colleagues who were true risk-takers with the music, who inspired me every day. Everything about this month was magical. It was the sort of experience that you get thrown into not knowing what is about to happen, and you feel almost drunk with marvelousness so much that you look back and think - wait, did this all REALLY happen? (Photos below the episode).