It’s our last night in Tarragona. This town has won our hearts. In the month we’ve been here, we’ve visited the Roman Aqueduct, Circus, Amphitheater, and other ruins (this was the capital of Roman Spain, and even the capital of Rome for a few years, while Julius Caesar was living here). We’ve visited the modern art museum, the cathedral, and the skate park. We had insanely good ramen in a Japanese place that was outfitted to look and feel like a Tokyo subway car absolutely papered with panels from manga, many of which the boys joyfully recognized. We had insanely good ice cream from Italian gelato places and (my favorite) the Galician spot up the ancient steps from our place. We had a giant pan of paella for our last big lunch here. One of the first nights here, I noticed a huge paella pan in the kitchen, so I tried my hand at it (twice) and will for sure be ordering a giant pan on Amazon after we get home. Yesterday, Aryeh played soccer, excuse me: FUTBOL, with a couple of local kids in the nearby square of Santa Tecla and got WORKED. But was glowing, he was so happy.
Last weekend, I flew to Murcia, south of us about a 6 hour drive (my brain is too tired for km or miles), almost in Andalusia, and past Valencia. My friend Cecilia is a newly minted professor of viola at the University there, and she invited me to play my Philip Glass and give a masterclass. Holy cow what a beautiful city. I hadn’t seen Cecilia in… 15 years? We played together on this one-off tour through Europe with a chamber orchestra that literally never played together besides that tour. The viola section- Cecilia, Esme and Miranda- was the highlight of it for me. During the pandemic, the four of us plus my friend Christine got together to play the 5-viola arrangement of the Erlkönig, which we tried to put together via that ill-fated app, Acapella, that we all were playing around with when we were forced into solitude by COVID. Unfortunately, it glitched too much when the fifth voice (Cecilia) was added, so we never were able to share it with the world. But the process of putting together music with friends in Madrid, Toronto, New York, and Kansas City, from our own little bunkers, was a blast. Maybe someday we’ll try again, now that we’re all better at video editing. Maybe someday we’ll get to play it together in real life. Anyway, it was a huge treat for me to get to meet Cecilia’s students. A sweet, curious and enthusiastic bunch. I only regretted that my Spanish wasn’t up to the task, and I ended up doing most of the class in English. Boo.
Tomorrow we take a 7 hour bus ride from Barcelona to Marseille. Adios, España. Me encanta para siempre.
