It's been a week - a very long week in the outside world - since I came home from two days at the Carmel Bach Festival, and my review has finally hit publication day at SFCV.
I'm satisfied with how I conveyed the impressions left by the music that I heard, but I said nothing about the logistics. So, here.
Parking in Carmel was pretty tight on Sunday when I arrived in late afternoon, having already claimed my hotel room in Monterey (only a ten-minute drive away, but much less expensive to stay at). I found a parking space on the uphill side of the shopping district, convenient for stopping in at an old favorite restaurant for dinner before continuing on to the theater, but that did mean a half-mile walk uphill back to the car when it was over. That was a bit much, and I sat at a bus stop and read for quite a while.
My tickets hadn't been obtained, and while the theater staff was able to accommodate me for the Sunday concert, they told me to phone the Festival box office in the morning for the rest. These folks said they were giving me everything for the day, including the Bach organ recital which I'd been intending to skip in favor of lunch. It was now after 10 AM, and the organ recital was at 11 at the Basilica out on the far edge of town. I hastened over to the one deli market I knew in town and grabbed some stuff for a makeshift lunch, keeping it in my car as I then drove out and looked for parking, ha ha, near the Basilica.
I'm glad I got to the organ recital, though: it was the best music-making I heard in the whole visit. As I sat there waiting for the recital to be over so I could visit the restroom (thus do our bodies betray us even during our most ethereal experiences), it occurred to me that if the critics hated Sibelius's Second Symphony because it keeps seeming like it's just about to end long before it does so, that Bach's organ music has the same characteristic.
Drive back into town, find one of the last parking spaces right by the theater, so no half-mile walk afterwards tonight. Eat my makeshift lunch, then a long walk to the Presbyterian Church for the master class. Get to the church. It has two doors, both locked. I'm stumped. Finally someone else comes along and suggests that a brick-laid garden path wandering off somewhere is the way uphill to the ground-level entrance to the second floor. That's where the sanctuary is, and that's where the master class is. Suggest to ticket-takers that a sign would be a good idea; no response.
Have to skip out early for another long walk to another church where the chamber music concert is. After that, finally a gap of free time. Dinner at a conveniently nearby restaurant that's new to me and very good. Back to the theater in time for the pre-concert talk and a brief concert by the volunteer Festival Chorus, which I forgot to mention in the review, blast it. Anyway, that's them in this concert in the photo in the review labeled "Singers at the Carmel Bach Festival," led by their conductor, John Swedberg.
Main concert, then that's it, back to my hotel room and home the next day.
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