Music in Botosani : Rapsozii Botosanilor orchestra and others

 "Rapsozii Botosanilor" is the "orchestra popular" of Botosani, funded by the county and because of that, they have to rehearse every morning for 3 hours, although most of the time they're there, hanging around smoking, drinking, talking but not playing so much. But whenever they have an upcoming concert, they play a lot and work hard. When we first arrived in Botosani in october, less than one week later, they offered to take us on the road with them for a concert in Iasi. I told the story of the long, long day in my last french message but the short story is that we left at 8 a.m. and spent the day visiting the city while the orchestra was rehearsing, and then we watched the 5 hour concert which was transmitted live on radio Iasi, with 2 presenters and a lot of different singers in traditional costumes (see pictures). It was nice at the beginning but after a while i couldn't stay seated on the bad chair and i had to move around the thousands of people. Anyway, no time to get our feet wet, we just dove right in! And the "after-show" was 2 hours of eating and talking and 3 hours of bus cause we stopped again on the road to drink and eat more. Time of  arrival back home : 4 a.m. Oh well, it was nice, we just didn't expect that. Worse than a klermer tour! ;-)
More information about this orchestra : there are around 15 musicians : 5-6 violin (+Jake now, sometimes), 1 cimbalom, 1 bass, 1 guitar and cobza player, 1 flute and drum player, 2 clarinetists and 2 trompeters plus the conductor, Ciprian who is Jake's great violin teacher. They rehearse in this studio space which is in the same building as the mediateca and special library for foreign languages. When I first went to this building i was alone, looking for the entrance to the mediatec. Since it always looked closed, i tried a door in back of the building and got in front of a hall with several doors. On the first one, there was a plaque with some names of oficers, ethnographers, ... and the musicologist Constantin Lupu! Jake and I had been looking for him and asking about him for a long time but the only information we could get was that he is a strange man, often drunk and that they don't recommend us to deal with him. But i was thinking it would be interesting for both of us to meet him. In this small town, there are not so many violinists who have done recordings of jewish music and research on local traditional musicians.
Anyway, i was thinking in front of the door for a few seconds and a man came out and asked me what i was looking for. I asked where the entrance for the mediatec was and if it was open. He showed me quickly with his finger and started to leave. I had just enough time to put some romanian words together in my mouth to ask him about Constantin Lupu. And as you must have guessed, that was him. I was so awkward introducing myself and trying to explain what we are here for and why to meet him!
..............."Nobody is Perfect".............
I made an appointment the same afternoon and with Jake it was easier right away. He speaks better romanian and plus, he's a man ! (kind of a macho country in here sometimes, or actually, most of the time, from what i've noticed until now...)
Music, music...what more to say. Oh yeah, i bought a beautiful Caval in A from republica moldova, (one of my dreams realised), and a fluier in C (and one in D but he's still making it cause the one he had was not so good). So today I started to learn some moldavian tunes on the special flute with the guy from the orchestra. He's not a good pedagogue but i really like him and he's a good musician, that's the most important.

Hopefully i will be able to learn more on the new flutes soon, and for now i need to practice everything i learned today....more news soon, about the school i'm working at or the chidren hospital, we'll see!
 Miss you a lot, family and friends!
Je vous embrasse fort,

éléonore*