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Through the efforts of Robert Schulz, FAME had been invited to send an orchestra to perform at the BDZ Zupfmusik Festival in Bamberg Germany between the 25th and 28th May 2006. This four-yearly festival hosts some of the top orchestras in Europe and from all around the world to share a weekend of concerts, workshops, buying opportunities and general exchange of friendships and cultures. Bamberg is a wonderful old city and was fortunate to have been largely spared from destruction during World War II. Its historic centre is largely intact and much of it is included on the World Heritage listing. A major river runs through the heart of the city (picture 1) and it has a fantastic performing arts centre right beside this river. This performing arts centre comprises a wonderful concert hall as well as another performance space and these two halls were used for the BDZ festival performances by nearly 80 ensembles comprising over 1600 musicians. It was a massive undertaking and went off without a hitch!

In these two venues concerts ran virtually all day with 20 minutes performances from all of the amateur ensembles and a few evening concerts featured professional ensembles and soloists (picture 2, picture 3) whose performances went for as long as an hour. These proved to be exceptional and were well attended. As well as the performances there were workshops and during the entire festival there was a very comprehensive trade fare conducted in the main foyer and on the various floors of the performing arts centre. There were a great number of musical instrument makers displaying examples of their meticulous handcraft and so it was possible to try out a huge number of beautiful mandolins, mandolas, classical guitars, lutes and other less common forms of plucked string instruments (picture 4). Several music publishing houses including Trekel and Vogt & Fritz had large displays of their published music for sale as well as a vast array of music CDs featuring, of course, mandolins and guitars. So it was possible to hear a wonderful mandolin orchestra play some of their exciting repertoire in a concert during the festival, then duck out of the concert hall to find a recording of the same music you'd just heard played live AND then buy the same music from the publishers! It was fantastic to have such a wealth of musical experiences and opportunities to hear new repertoire and then purchase the music to bring back to Oz!

The AMO was programmed to perform on the opening day of the BDZ festival and that proved to be a bonus as we could then spend the remaining 3 days relaxing, looking around Bamberg. We performed Robert Schulz's Outback and Anne Carr-Boyd's Music for an Imaginary Italian Film to fill the 20minutes allotted to us and our performance was well received (picture 5). Subsequent feedback was very positive and all our players were pleased to have had the opportunity to participate in the Festival.

However, our performance at the BDZ Festival was actually the very last time we played together as a group. We had met nearly 2 weeks earlier on Sunday 14th of May in the Youth Hostel in Darmstadt (picture 6), south of Frankfurt, nearly 4 months since we'd intensively rehearsed the new repertoire for our European tour for a brief week in Canberra during January 2006. We were delighted that all 37 players with 10 non-playing partners/hangers-on/groupies had arrived safely. We barely had enough time to rehearse once (picture 7) before giving our first concert in the small country town of Dudenhofen the day after we had arrived somewhat jet-lagged. Two days later we gave our second concert performance, this time in a beautiful church in Koenigstein (picture 8) where we shared the stage with the Falkenstein Orchestra. This excellent orchestra was directed by Keith Harris, well-known Australian expatriate and former mandolin virtuoso who has been teaching and conducting in Germany and other European countries for several decades. It was wonderful to catch up with Keith who, despite failing health, is still in excellent spirits, working hard and totally dedicated to the promotion of mandolin orchestra music.

The AMO then left its base in Darmstadt and we drove in our hired coach to spend a couple of nights in a former monastery in Barmen (picture 9), near Julich in northern Germany. En route our driver took a short detour so that we could follow the Rhine River (picture 10, picture 11) for a while and we had a brief stop in the riverside town of Bacharach to stretch our legs and take some photos. The monastery in Barmen had its own performance hall and we shared its stage with a local orchestra for our next concert. We then had an "off-day" to explore the nearby city of Aachen (picture 12).

Our next destination was Biezenmortel, a tiny rural community in Holland where our accommodation was in a former convent! (picture 13, picture 14) Before our concert in Breda we had a day off to explore nearby Den Bosch. Our concert performance in Breda was shared with Benny Ludemann's group "Estrellita" (picture 15) who gave a wonderful performance playing an all-Schulz program. This was a fantastic tribute to Robert and we all felt even more proud of our leader whose inspiration and hard work had enable us to come to Europe in the first place!

We then had another free day and were taken to visit a cheese farm (picture 16 , picture 17) near Gouda where they made cheese from their own cows' milk. The air was redolent with country smells bringing back fond or not so fond memories to at least a few tour members!!! We also had a look through Gouda (picture 18, picture 19) and had a tour of the massive system of flood gates constructed along one part of the northern coast by the Dutch to control flood waters during powerful storms. We gave a vigorous performance in Stolwijk (picture 20) that evening sharing the stage with the local orchestra comprised exclusively of women players who had earlier in the evening given us a veritable feast!

The following day we were free to go off touring in small groups and so we had the opportunity to explore Den Haag (picture 21), Amsterdam and even Delft or just stay back at the convent to catch up with laundry! The next day we finally decamped for our long drive back to Germany (picture 22) and the BDZ festival in Bamberg where we were accommodated in Die Alte Poste hotel, a 20 minute walk from the performing arts centre.

We had a wonderful time, made new friends and renewed old friendships, saw a lot of fascinating places, drank too much beer and wine (fig.23), ate too much cheese and too many sausages, played music almost until our fingers bled, and had a lot of fun. When the BDZ festival concluded we went our separate ways, some immediately returning to Australia and other going off on holidays to other destinations. Oh, what a life!

We cannot give Robert Schulz enough praise for all his efforts to get this tour together. There were many difficulties and a lot of politics which threatened to derail the entire "project" but in the end all these issues were smoothed out with diplomacy and compromise and goodwill. Throughout the drawn out planning and preparation for the tour as well as during the tour itself, Robert retained his sense of humour and kept the show on the road. We hope he has fully recovered and look forward to his NEXT TOUR (hint, hint!).

Here's a list of the music we played during our various concerts:

"Brolga Dances" by Michelle Nelson (and leader of our guitar section) and "Dances for The Mandolin and the Moon" by Richard Charlton (both newly commissioned works for the FAME tour), "Music for an Imaginary Italian Film" by Anne Carr-Boyd, "Outback", "Three Studies|" and "Sandgroper Serenade" by our conductor Robert Schulz, "You and Me" by Russell Reinhardt player in our 2nd mandolin section (with the flute solo beautifully performed by Russell's partner Bernadette Hawkins, who also played double-bass), and "Restless Legs" and "Tunnel Vision" by the hyperactive Robert Kay, acoustic bass guitarist extraordinaire!

During several of our concerts our exceptionally talented leader, Marissa Carroll (who at 13 was then probably the youngest leader of any mandolin orchestra anywhere!), played a number of virtuosic duets with her guitarist father and tutor Ray Carroll, thereby demonstrating to our audiences in Germany and Holland that there is extraordinary talent outside of Europe! We just hope that Marissa gives up her ideas of becoming a dancer!

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