Author: Benjamin Carter

Today was largely a travel day, and we commuted across the country from Leipzig to the Koblenz area in western Germany. Koblenz means confluence, and the city appropriately sits at the confluence of the Rhine and Moselle rivers. I spent most of my day on trains today, first taking a 3-hour ICE train from Leipzig…

I find this hard to believe, but today marks the 7th installment of this blog! We had a full day to enjoy Leipzig, and Leipzig did not disappoint. After breakfast, the choir went to another religious service at Bachfest to hear the Sociedad Bach del Paraguay (Bach Society of Paraguay) perform two cantatas and a…

After yesterday’s exciting concert and late night, today was thankfully a very light day! We departed Berlin for Leipzig this morning at around 10:00 AM, and the commute was nowhere near as far (or delayed) as our commute from Frankfurt to Berlin. We arrived in Leipzig around 1:00 PM, and after settling in at our…

Today marked our final day in Berlin, and it was our most significant musical day yet! Our first schedule obligation was a three hour final rehearsal for our Mendelssohn Concert with the Junges Ensemble. The concert repertoire included Mendelssohn’s choral-orchestral works Psalm 42 and Die erste Walpurgisnacht, and the a cappella motet Denn er hat…

In comparison to the other trip days, today was the earliest ending yet, which is great because it allows me to publish this blog sooner and get to bed at a decent hour tonight! Our first scheduled obligation today was a combined rehearsal with the orchestra for the Mendelssohn Concert tomorrow at 1:00 PM, so…

What a day! I’m going to attempt to keep this entry shorter because I’ve sacrificed sleep the last two nights to finish the posts, but there were so many great and interesting aspects of today that I need to mention. First of all, my roommate and I were the first Cardinal Singers to breakfast today…

Today, the choir had free time until our evening concert call time at Evangelische Luisenkirche. My roommate and I are early risers generally, and it was amusing to arrive to breakfast at 8:00 and see only two other choir members there! A few were starting to trickle in by 9:00, but I imagine most of…

Traveling with a group this large is always something akin to herding cats. Through no fault of the group, making sure a 30+ person choir gets from Louisville, KY, to Berlin, Germany is an exercise in both patience and endurance. Our flights from Louisville to Newark and Newark to Frankfurt were thankfully seamless! We had…