First up: curious, wonderful signs on the front doors of two fine, independently-owned establishments in far-flung corners of the US, the first in Tallahassee, FL, the second in Laramie, WY.
Below, the ubiquitous Wyoming image of the bucking bronco. A Democratic dentist, Lester Hunt, first put the image on license plates in the 1930s, but it appears on statues, shop signs, tourist items, posters, shirts, and everything and anything that is nailed down in this great state. Mr Hunt was a US Senator for a handful of years, until a dastardly blackmail plot destroyed his career and took his life.
Now this is more like it. Wyoming is home to some of the most serene, powerful vistas in these United States, and thanks to the almost complete absence of fences, walls or security apparatus of any kind, I was able to experience this first-hand. Our hotel backed onto a seemingly endless series of trails that led up into the mountains, so every day during our WY sojourn, rugged-up with thermals and a pair of gloves, I bounded through the scattered scrub like the cliched Aussie kangaroo that I am. At the high altitude I heaved and panted and wheezed, but it was worth it!
The Wyoming folks kept us busy during our stay, with masterclasses, open rehearsals and composer readings. Below, a recording session for one of the young composers’ works.
Several interesting facts are worth mentioning. The University of Wyoming is a rather well-off school because of two happy accidents: it happens to exist in an oil-rich, sparsely populated state; Dick Cheney was a former student, and has given many millions to the school, particularly the international studies area. Wyoming is the “equality” state, as it was the first to give women the right to vote, to allow women to serve on a jury, and to have a female governor; the downtown is still littered with historic buildings that as recently as 40 years ago housed brothels that had existed since the 1870s.
The University’s music department puts a great emphasis on education (from talks with several faculty members it became clear that arts education is mercifully alive and well in WY’s high schools), and has an fabulous, if improbably-named, outreach program (well worth investigating by other schools), Opera in a Gym, that literally takes small opera productions into school gyms in town of several hundred folks. This reminded me of my experiences in Oz Opera, Opera Australia’s dinky-die touring program.
Our concert, though quite sparsely attended, seemed something of a success to the school, as we were somewhat overrun with enthusiastic students backstage after the show (this is not a typical occurrence) and we sold out of most of our CD titles. To celebrate a fascinating trip we all decamped to the Altitude Chophouse and Brewery, a fine establishment that to our surprise and delight served beer flights (or samplers) of their eight brews. These were no pissy little samples, either – they brought out enough beer to drown an entire army of very over-fed, genetically-altered rats. The Mac and I look over the 32 beers that four of us had to share. Recommendations? If memory serves, and it certainly didn’t after 8 brews, the weissbier, the pilsner and the stout were particularly good.
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