Symphony Orchestra camp!

This weekend I spent in Birzeit, a village in the vicinity of Ramallah, on a rehersal camp with the Edward Said National Conservatory for Music's symphony orchestra. The music school is part of the University of Birzeit, I think (but maybe I'm just mislead by the official name Edward Said Conservatory).

It's a 3 day camp friday to sunday, but Palestinian kids are off from school friday and sunday (muslim and christian holidays) so they need to be driven back to school for saturday, which gives an awkward break.

The facade of the music school - I love the decorations!

It's the first time I play in a proper symphony orchestra; It's strange to be a lonely clarinet, when I'm used to big clarinet flocks in harmony orchestra, but nice to try to be THE principal clarinet.

And I've figured out that winds are as important as strings in a symphony orchestra, or even more: the winds have all the beautiful fill-ins, give the strings' sound more colour, and they are great for solos because there's more sound in one wind instrument than in one string-. So now I'm even more proud of being a clarinetist!