4.3. Timur and Daniel perform for the camera

Daniel with uke, and Timur---Dime Museumers on a break
Eugene with his beloved boom

Daniel Corral, representing me in Silent Steppe Cantata rehearsals, reminding me of my dad in this photo

Post by Eugene Moon; photos by Sandra Powers

After the adventures of today, we decided to film Timur's operatic singing for the cantata project. While we were waiting in our rooms to begin filming, I suddenly got nauseous and developed a headache. Lying down to recuperate didn't help, and the room got suddenly hot and stuffy. Next I tried walking around the hotel to get better, but I didn’t expect the hotel to have various smells. Each area has the smell of food and some other strange aromas, but the smell that nearly made me sick was the smell of qurt. I wasn’t sure if the restaurant was making more qurt or if I could just smell it in my head. I decided it was the latter, and assumed that all the kumys I drank earlier, which was enjoyable, was the source of my illness. After a while, I was feeling better and was able to help film Timur and Dan's performance. We used the large and spacious ballroom, and Sandra started filming Timur singing an operatic improvisation about the cantata project, while Dan played the ukulele and I held the boom pole.

Dan and I will have a dombra lesson tomorrow night. This should be exciting. I hope I can buy a dombra before I leave. If I watch any more Sazgen Sazy rehearsals, I might want to learn all the instruments they play. They were just so wonderful and interesting to listen to and play, that it might overwhelm me with the desire to own and play the instruments.