Tour Diary: With Typhoon, Earthquake, and Love
I’m on the slow train, high in the mountains northwest of Tokyo, on a concert tour in Japan with my piano quartet, the Thunder Egg Consort. The quartet is named after Oregon’s state rock.
We made it through the double typhoon in Osaka, and last night there was an earthquake (5.9) that woke us up from our deep sleep. 2 couples, 4 kids, 2 grandparents.
It’s at this point in my life that I don’t really want to leave Oregon for tours unless it means something special, beyond the concerts and rehearsals. It has to make a lasting imprint on my life, my children’s lives. It’s like I have a devoted notebook, each page with a stamp of a particular adventure, dinner, cultural surprise, that I can page through, touch, feel and smell.
When I was younger, I hit the pavement hard, first as a child, practicing incessantly, competing nationally, then internationally, and finally making it to the Curtis Institute of Music at age 18. Curtis is an elite, tuition-free music school in Philadelphia, considered to be one of the best in the world.
Then came years of building my career, long periods on the road, finding management, recording CD’s, moving to Germany and back to Oregon. Concerts night after night.
But now, as a middle-aged, menopausal woman, my desires for a career have changed. Don’t get me wrong – I’m still a sucker for the hot stage lights, the hard work, the payoff of a concert deeply felt, the applause. But that’s just not enough anymore. Now I need to know what I can pass along from these experiences to my kids, how this can strengthen and vary the interwoven fabric that we are creating together, tapestries that they will hold forever and pass on to their own families.
The squeaky train cuts through the rice fields, stacked in irregular shapes against the rising mountains, covered in a thick, moist green, the clouds lazily hanging here and there. Small towns dot the landscape, minuscule train stops, meandering rivers, marble cemeteries.
As the train snakes through this crazy-quilt of a landscape, I wonder what new square we will add from this trip to our family quilt of experience. Maybe it is the memory of our big hug, the four of us all together, during the earthquake. Perhaps it is the group brainstorm of ways to get to the train station during the typhoon, safe and with dry instruments (and our good humor and long card games when train after train was cancelled). Or possibly the confidence we have in our teenagers, age 14 and 16, leaving them alone in the evenings, knowing they can navigate large cities by themselves, finding dinner and making it back to the hotel while we are away at a concert.
In one hour, we have a 15 minute train change – the plan is to grab a quick bowl of ramen before hopping on the fast train – the bullet train – to Sendai, where our next stage awaits, where the young quartet that our quartet has birthed will have their own expedition together, creating new memories, learning to be brave and adventurous in a new city, while their parents don their suits and dresses, paying homage to the composers of the past and present.
Read other posts by Anthea Kreston
