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Tuesday - April 22nd 2003
Kazan is an amazing city and it's the capital
of the Tadarstan region. There is obviously a lot of money here
and there's a lot of construction going on and new buildings everywhere.
The venue for tonight's show is The Pyramid and the building
itself is brand new and I am told it cost $40 million!! More of
this later…
Perhaps the most amazing thing is The Kremlin and I found
out that Kremlin means, roughly, "walled city". This one
(and I was only able to capture a small part of this on the picture)
houses churches of the Russian Orthodox, Muslim and Catholic faiths
and, in the old days The Kremlins (and every city had one) was the
seat of government too. In times of conflict the peasants (those
who lived outside the Kremlin walls) could run inside and take refuge.
The inside of the Pyramid reminded me a little of Las Vegas actually
but tonight we were playing with the Kazan State Chamber Orchestra
so we didn't have much time to look around before we needed to start
rehearsals!! But we did go to the top floor for lunch and that gave
us an opportunity to get a birds-eye view of Kazan. From here we
could see the Kazanka River and it was a great chance to take some
amazing pictures!!
After a quick press conference we went to work and rehearsals went
well… then we set about dealing with some technical problems!
It took a while but we got it done and, before we knew it, it was
show time!! This was the last concert on the tour part of the schedule,
it was already sold out and there was a real "buzz" in
the building and in the dressing rooms too!!
The place was packed on all levels and they were using two giant
video screens to project the show which made for great pictures.
The ones I have sent are just a few of many but I think they will
give you the idea of how it looked. The lights were great and we
ended the "tour" on a really high note.
The promoter invited us to dinner in the Pyramid Resturant afterwards
but we didn't have a lot of time as we had an early flight to Moscow
in the morning.
Next
day...
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