Looking back: Kodály’s birthday, student concert, gift exchange, bumper cars!

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More photos of December 16th, Kodály’s birthday: https://www.baon.hu/galeria/kodaly-szuletesenek-137-evfordulojara-emlekeztek-kecskemeten/9
Throughout the day we placed three different wreaths to commemorate Kodály’s birthday, and sang his Hungarian birthday greeting song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n6rjWhatRs4
The Institute’s Deputy director Laura Kéri stands at the left next to Péter Erdei the founding director of the Institute and Hungarian choral directing legend. Current director László Nemes stands at the far right.
Later that day we all bused to Budapest to visit Kodály’s old apartment (a museum now), and to attend the Kodály concert at the Liszt Academy that evening.
From the vocal ensembles, ours was selected to sing at the student concert on December 15th: we sang “Freue dich des Weibes deiner Jugend” by Schein. It’s a great piece, written right in the transition between the Renaissance and Baroque. (though not us, here’s a recording of the piece: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2h7DElTx5gM). We’ve been able to make very good progress as an ensemble this semester, especially since our voices all meld together quite well and we are all capable of our own complex parts. We been invited by our professor Árpád Toth to participate in his huge “night of choirs” event in Budapest in February (a 20 minute set of music for us). He is one of the most popular teachers at the Institute, and with good reason: just see this brief TEDtalk by him and you’ll know what I mean! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D_wM8bjQ_KE (there are English subtitles). To the best of my knowledge he is the choral director star in Hungary.
From left to right: Shunzhi Tang (China, tenor), me (USA, bass), Teresa Appleton (Portugal, alto; also my fellow BA1 classmate), Orsi Csoma (Hungary, soprano 1), Mila Chen (China, soprano 2)
One day that week Teresa Appleton and Sarah Keane (Ireland) showed me a hole-in-the-wall Indian restaurant/canteen: the best thing to do is simply to order “The Menu,” which comes with their offerings for the day.
Our end of the semester party after the Secret Santa gift exchange–nearly all the students of the Institute are here.
For the exchange we had to describe “our person,” so that they would recognize the match and come up to claim their gift. Sarah Keane probably could have left off any explanation and just have held up what obviously was a wedge of cheese wrapped neatly in used sheet music. My classmates know how much I like cheese! Thanks to how cheap (yet quality) the food is here I’ve been able to add a 1.3kg block of Hungarian Trappista cheese to my weekly shopping list.
The roast chicken I brought was one of the most popular dishes, and probably had the most return on investment considering that all did was stick it in the oven with seasoning and a lid for two hours. I started to wonder whether they were eating the bones too! There really weren’t even scraps left at the end. You can also see I’d already started in on my chunk of cheese from the gift exchange.
Afterwards we walked through the Christmas market in the middle of town and had a ton of fun with the bumper cars that have been set up for the holidays! I’ll let the following pictures speak for themselves as well as introduce you to many of my classmates.
Left to right: Lee Khim–Singapore, Miklos Jr.–Hungary (he and his father, Miklos Sr. are faculty in the library, but we also have fun folk dancing with him at the music cafe on Wednesdays), Marina–Spain, Yan–China, Clodagh–Ireland, Zhequi (?)–China, Haodong–China, Mila–China, Jackie–China
Teresa (Portugal, also my fellow BA1 classmate), and Sarah (Ireland)
Carmen (Malaysia), Gareth (USA, here for one semester from Ohio; also one of my flatmates this past semester), Aditi (India, Hungarian folk dance enthusiast), Yanjun (Singapore)
Paria & Soroush (Iran)
Anna and Ula (Poland)
Campbell (Australia), Yanjun (Singapore)
Teresa (Portugal), Sarah (Ireland)
Paria (Iran), Marina (Spain)
Mila and Haodong (China)
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