Aaron Goldman is the Assistant Principal Flute in the NSO

The orchestra arrived in Little Rock yesterday and has a welcome day off after four full days of traveling and concerts.  Since we left DC, it feels as though we've either been sitting in a bus, getting ready to sit in a bus, or playing a concert - having four nights in the same hotel in Little Rock is a luxury.

Since joining the orchestra in 2006, I have been with the orchestra on three residencies - Kansas, South Carolina, and now Arkansas.  So far, I've traveled to some poor, small towns.  Nothing I've seen, though, has been quiet like what we encountered in Helena (it is in Phillips County, the poorest county in Arkansas).  On the bus ride into town, we passed crumbling homes, and boarded up buildings; almost every structure was in some form of disrepair.  We played a concert on Wednesday evening which was free to the public because of a generous former citizen of Helena, Samuel Warfield, who set up a trust to bring music to his community.  We also played two Young People's Concerts in Helena for school children of Phillips and Lee Counties on Thursday morning.  I have played Young People's Concerts for as many years as I've played professionally and have never been in a concert hall full of students that was as quiet while we played as the one in Helena.

My trio (with Abby Evans, viola, and Jeff Weisner, bass) gave its first educational performance of the tour yesterday in Searcy, AR at Harding University.  We drove in one of the education vans (the orchestra rents vans to transport groups around to all the various outreach activities) directly from our Young People's Concerts in Helena.  The two and a quarter hour drive from Helena took us through some pretty run down parts of the state, but the university was beautiful and the recital hall we performed in had great acoustics.  After a reception hosted by the university, it was back into the van for a short, hour long drive to Little Rock.  During the drive, Jeff tried to explain the in and outs of playing bridge.  Evidently, you need more than an hour.