Cambodia 2019
A fulfilling day of surprises
We can’t believe it’s only our second day here! Today was full of unexpected surprises and discoveries.
Morning Sessions:
We started our day at 8:30 each individually having a session with one to two people who play our own instrument. It was a nice way to connect and chat with the students through our shared instrument!
Sara: Today I played some duets with a student who just started playing clarinet one month ago! I couldn’t believe how well he plays after one month and his main major is singing. Many of the students at RUFA seem to be multi-talented and curious to learn many different types of music and instruments. I was also able to catch some of the traditional music rehearsals going on at the school today which was amazing!
Cindy: I met one of the cello student today. She told me that she was very worry about the mistakes she made while playing the cello. We worked on some fingers and bow exercises according to the piece she is playing at the moment and we were focusing on clarify those confusing passages. I showed her some tricks I usually do for my own practice and it also works very well on her! She is very inquisitive and observed everything I did on my cello and do it very well! We are both happy about the amount of work we have done today and we finished our section with some nice body stretching to help us relax!
Antoine: It was very inspiring to work with the students of the Royal University of Fine Arts! We started the saxophone lessons with some stretching and breathing exercises in order to feel good physically before starting playing saxophone. Besides, we focused on the posture and tried to solve together the musical questions the students had. It was really nice to let me influence by their inspiration and amazement, thanks to all of you! I also had the chance to observe a choir lesson where they practiced a song in latin and the national Cambodian anthem. A very exciting experience full of enthusiasm and creativity.
After our individual sessions we also met as a group, because yesterday’s session with all of the students who were available (including traditional music students, percussion, etc) was such a great time, see previous blog post!
Lunch time:
After the sessions we had a nice lunch at the Museum Cafe next door. Sara tried tamarind tea for the first time and Cindy and Antoine had some delicious fresh passion fruit tea!
Afternoon sessions:
This was possibly the best part of our day! We had some new faces so we started with another introduction and question session. The students at RUFA asked us about the origin of our project, why Cambodia, and how we feel about Cambodia so far. We also asked some questions that we’ve been having about them like why they chose their instrument/major and what kinds of courses they take.
This eventually led to mini performances of a huge range of traditional Cambodian instruments and songs that they were able to share with us. The most of the music haven’t been written down and some of them were played even before Angkor Wat (12th century). We were also impressed by their circular breathing techniques which they must do for playing some of these instruments.
As exchange, Antoine also shared a piece he’s been working on In Freundschaft (In friendship) by Stockhausen. After Antoine’s performance, some students came and chatted with him about their feeling after listening to his playing and was very curious about the different characters in the piece.
It was a real musical and cultural exchange!
We ended session with some more group rhythm and improvisation games.
Finally, another nice surprise!
Cindy’s cello, the Groke, came back! We found him sitting in the hotel lobby waiting for us.
Oh là là! Look what is this!
We consider our selves as an inquisitive and curious ensemble so we agreed to try something special as our dinner today: Creepy Fried Tarantula dipped with sauce and lime. Actually it tasted very chewy! 🕷
Tomorrow is a free day for us. Keep following our amazing trip with more surprises!
Aeki Ensemble
