Good morning! After spending the past several days traveling all over Greece, today was going to be quite different. Instead of rushing from one archaeological site to another, we were spending most of our day preparing for the biggest concert of the trip. After our relaxed morning, we first made our way to the Megaron Concert Hall for our first rehearsal with the Underground Youth Orchestra of Athens. The Megaron Concert Hall is one of Athens’ most important cultural venues. The name Megaron refers to the great central hall found in Bronze Age Mycenaean palaces, where important ceremonies, meetings, and royal events took place. As I stepped into our rehearsal room, I honestly had no idea what to expect. Besides the fact that they were musicians, I didn’t know anything else about the Underground Youth Orchestra–how old they were, what their skill level was, or how much English they spoke. Despite my worries, rehearsal ended up being just fine. My stand partner was a 20 year old named Georgia, who was incredibly friendly and spoke English well enough for us to communicate without trouble. Although I didn’t get to know Georgia very well, we were both dealing with the same things musicians deal with: counting rests, trying not to get lost in the music, and hoping we didn’t accidentally come in at the wrong time. Getting to rehearse alongside young Greek musicians was especially meaningful for us because music is what connects us all, even though we come from completely different parts of the world. It was really interesting to hear the orchestra play and experience what it was like to make music with people from another country. Eventually, rehearsal came to an end, and we returned to the hotel for some much-needed downtime.

After dinner, we loaded back onto the buses and headed toward our concert venue for tonight. We would be playing outdoors in a park near the statue of Georgios Karaiskakis, one of the most important military leaders of the Greek War of Independence. Once we arrived, we began our usual pre-concert routine, setting up our chairs, music stands, and instruments before getting ready for our performance. However, this concert was a little different. Although it wasn’t going to be our final performance in Greece, it was the last time we would perform on our own before joining the Underground Youth Orchestra for tomorrow night’s concert. With every concert, we seemed to get a little more comfortable performing in public. After performing a couple of times prior, we were starting to get the hang of performing in public spaces. With each concert, we became more confident and began to develop our own “sound’ as Mr. Stickley would say. The concert went smoothly, and it was exciting to see another Greek audience gather to listen to us. As we packed up our instruments that night, I realized that no two concerts on this trip had been quite the same. But our concert experience in Greece wasn’t quite over yet. The day after tomorrow would be different though; instead of performing on our own, we would finally be sharing the stage with the Underground Youth Orchestra, and I couldn’t wait to hear what we would create together.