I FEEL sLOVEnia

I'm just back from the Flute Festival in Slovenia. It was totally magic as it always is. My son, Mark came with me. It was his first visit to Slovenia so we went two days before the festival so we could have a look around.

Matej Zupan, who is our Flutewise Artist of the Year, has been organising these flute festival in the town of Zagorje ob Savi since the last century, the first one was in 1996. They tend to happen every two years and they are brilliantly organised. Lots of us went two years ago when we had the amazing opportunity for the Flutewise choir to perform there. Ian Clarke was taking part and he conducted us playing Walk Like this. You might like to read the old blog post about it.
http://www.flutewise.com/slovenia-wow
http://www.flutewise.com/slovenia-thank-yous
http://www.flutewise.com/and-special-thanks-to
http://www.flutewise.com/what-did-we-eat-in-slovenia
http://www.flutewise.com/a-post-from-stephen

Back to this one. I've a confession to make. You know I'm really, really good at organising things. Organising is probably one of my biggest strengths. So I was quite surprised to realise that I'd done this. Just before we left for the airport on Thursday morning my husband asked what time we'd be back on Sunday. I said I thought it would be very late, around midnight, but I gave him the paperwork to check the flight time. He then told me that we were booked to come back on Saturday evening, not Sunday!!! I was mortified. Mark wasn't too best pleased.

Knowing we had a shorter time there made us make the most of it though. We stayed in Ljubljana on Thursday and Friday. It's the capital and a lovely place, even more so now that the centre has no cars, only pedestrians and cyclists. On Friday we had lunch with our dear friends Ana and Blaz Pucihar before we headed off to Zagorje. We had been invited to a picnic at Vladamir's house which was absolutely fantastic and great to meet up with lots of friends old and new. Mike Mower and Tim Carey arrived a short time after us. A happy time was had by all.

We drove back down very windy roads to our hotel which looked lovely and peaceful. We were both looking forward to a really good sleep. That didn't happen! some locals had a good fight at around 1.00 am. The church bells chimed every 15 minutes and at 5.00 am masses of motorbikes started up - it's a tradition apparently on 1st May. Then at 6.45 the church bells chimed for 30 minutes. I must invest in some earplugs I think.

As we had so little time I decided to hear one item from each concert and then visit the flute stands in between.

The first performance I heard was by Aldo Baerten who is from Belgium. I heard him perform Silhouttes by Jean Absil. Ameddeo Salvato played the piano. It was excellent, I wish I could have heard more.

Next I heard American Amy Porter perform Copland's Duo with Ameddeo Salvato again on piano. Amy is a really accomplished player and it was a joy to hear  her.

After lunch I listen to Widor's Suite played by Peter-Lukas Graff with Andreja Kosmac on piano. What a privilege to hear such a legendary flute player live.

In between all of this I caught up with friends and went flute shopping! It was so exciting. I'll tell you about what I found soon.