June’s performance

The one thing that I did’t write about yesterday was June.  She is a wonderful Japanese American woman who lives in Idaho, of all places.  She came to the US to go to college and met her husband there while she was in a math class.  She’s along on this journey with the youngest of her three kids, her very tall son James.  She double majored in school in flute performance and biomedical science, and is just about the most interesting person I have met in a while.  

She brought a flute to play at Machu Picchu, and she did just that at an early-morning entry time.  Apparently, she got through most of El Condor Pasa before a security person shut her down.  I suppose that makes sense.  If every hippie with a guitar and band kid with a trombone could do as they pleased, it would be cacophony.  

But June is special, and somehow, I suspect they didn’t run to shut her down- maybe they walked.  Maybe they walked slowly.  She’s pretty good.  I missed it.  Cas was just saying goodbye to the last vestiges of the stomach bug that all of us who visited the Amazon managed to pass around.  I could hardly abandon my husband to go listen to an illegal flute performance at one of the wonders of the modern world- no matter how cool that sounds.  

I chalked that one up to being a good wife.  Oh, well.  But the Monestario Hotel provided an opportunity.  They had a chapel there that June was permitted to use and they gave her a half hour yesterday to perform.  She had brought a beginner’s flute- in case it was lost or -God forbid- confiscated, she didn’t want her professional one in the mix.  She stood in front of the cathedral with an elaborate Catholic display behind her, wearing her travel clothes and told pieces of her life, punctuated with music.  She played El Condor Pasa, just as she had practiced for Machu Picchu.  She played Danny Boy, partly for the Irish-American woman in our group, and partly as a tribute to her lonely college self using music to connect with her fellow students all those years ago.  She played a Japanese folk song that I wish I had recorded, and finally, she played a version of Ave Maria that I hadn’t heard before.  She chose that one because she was in the chapel of a former monastery.  There is a video of her playing that last song in our photo album.  You really should check it out.  

She is something special.  If I am ever in Idaho, I am scheduling an event of some kind, just so I can book her to play all of the music.  

Check out Our Photo Album.  There’s a video of her in there.