I´m in my office in Trondheim now. I actually live with my piano for a period of time. After 10 days of vacation in sunny Florida, I don´t mind working hard now. I´m preparing Scriabins piano concerto for my exam. And I´m also preparing Grieg´s concerto for May. So I really need this time. After a very successful meditation workshop in Phoenix just before I left the country, I´m also very inspired. I´ve even joined a work-out centre now! So.. let´s roll!
To summarize the last part of the tour. The concerts in Houston were a great experience, just as Dallas was. The Norwegian General Consulate sponsored it and it was a real honor to get this trust and support from the diplomacy. For them this is a way show their Norwegian culture and build bridges across national boarders. And this is an important factor of this concert concept of mine. Weather wise Texas was kinda like being in Trondheim this weekend.. and Texans aren´t used to that. So there were some cancellations from the guest list unfortunately. But the turnout was still pretty good and the response from them, including the stab from the St Thomas University, was very pleasant. Then we proceeded to New Orleans! A very unique town. We had some days for sight-seeing there. The concert became a nice surprise actually. Not that I expected it to be bad, but it´s not easy to attract people to the Seamen´s Churches. But here they had 3-4 times as much as expected! This also includes professional musicians from the classical music society. New Orleans is more than just jazz you know. They have the oldest opera house in the US! They also have large universities with music programs. We attended a concert ourselves the next day with a Russian pianist. He played Chopin, Rachmaninov and Scriabin. I think the world has seen better Russian pianists than this guy, but that´s that... New Orleans is a "dirty" town, downtown it´s pretty much about sex, alcohol and jazz. But that´s the charm I guess.. We agreed that it was a great experience to witness the atmosphere of the town, but we would never live here.
Then the journey went on to Atlanta, Georgia. Who would have thought they have Norwegians there? But they have. And it´s a brand new Sons of Norway lodge with lots of enthusiasm. We stayed at Dotty and Tansie. They were excellent hosts with broad southern dialect. They had a house in a more rural suburb of Atlanta called Loganville. The house was jam packed of dolls and angels, so we pretty much lived in a museum! We experienced the largest aquarium in Atlanta. It´s so big that they even have a single aquarium with 3 whale sharks. We also so the strange natural phenomenon Stone Mountain which is the National Park where Dotty and Tansie work. It´s very flat in this area of the country, but suddenly there is a mountain there. And it´s not one of these Norwegian style mountains which is like a pile of rocks. It looked as if there were one big rock just placed there. This is because of lava bubbles from ancient times that hardens and become granitt. Then erosion lower the areas around (softer material) and expose this ball of rock. It was very beautiful, nice view also. The concert was at Emory Univeristy, and it was so nice that they cooperated with the university. This is like being gradually transfered into the more general American concert scene, so that´s ideal.
We drove to Florida early next morning to witness a regatta in St Augustine. Gateway to Florida, the Sons of Norway lodge in Jacksonville celebrated their anniversary this weekend. So there were lots of people from all over Florida + dignitaries. Both Eivind Heiberg, fraternal director at the SofN Headquarters and Dan Rude himself, the international president was there. There were also people with top positions in districts and zones of this organization. They also showed up for my concert the next day. The concert was co-sponsored by a beautiful church in Jacksonville. So this became a wonderful finale for this long tour. It´s actually part 1 of the tour, because I had to cancel some concerts up north. But I will do another 10-15 concerts in Washington, Oregon, BC and Montana in September this year. So I will do more than I originally planned!
After the last concert, we went on a vacation to the following places in Florida: Fort Lauderdale, Key West and St Petersburg Beach - that is along the coast of the entire Florida. We departed from Orlando, but skipped the amusement parks. Instead we enjoyed a lazy life on the amazing white beaches outside St Petersburg. It was quite simply like a beach vacation with bathing, sun burning, cheap drinks and all that. The journey back to Norway went fine. The plane went from Orlando to Gatwick, London. Then we had to bring all the luggage in a bus to Heathrow and wait for some hours for the plane to Oslo. In Oslo we had to take out our luggage again and wait several hours for the plane to Trondheim. So it was a long day. But it really went fine.
So then I hereby finish the blog for now! But I want to get some more routine doing a blog like this. The idea when I established www.knuterikjensen.com, was to have a regular blog every week. This is more like a project thing. But it would be fun to write one general blog every week. Then I can share more of my weird thoughts, projects and doings. So let´s just decide that. I hereby decide that I will write a new blog every Sunday. I will probably establish a different blog with a more general name, but just enter my website and click on blog. You will be forwarded to the correct one. Feel free to register as a "user" so I can have an idea on who´s reading it :-)
Thank you! And thank you for watching this blog. Also thank you for all the nice feedback!
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