Chapter 29

The lunch was very nice. Discussion was launched on whether we would be able to do solo violin concerts in future seasons, and a question was put to me about a piano concert some time. We told them to get in touch with Allan as he could work out likely dates but that we may be busy with the “For those who Served” shows next year and were unlikely to be touring as we were this summer.

That night was a little different. The conductor and the orchestra had now been subjected to a booster shot of the Swan, and the first half sparkled. When we came on after the break, we got a good round of applause and the many stood when we finished the first piece and more stood when we finished the second.

The orchestra was really on song tonight, and we acknowledged them and the conductor before we did the Paganini. They wanted more so the lead cello was brought forward, and I could see the journalists in the extra front row of seats all lean forward with notepads poised.

Pet gave me a wink before we were led into it by the cello, and we put a lot of emotion into it. When I opened my eyes when we finished there was a whole row of journalists sobbing. You don’t get to be on top of your game in that business without picking up a lot of baggage along the way.

The after party was very nice, a lot of smiling players and several wives of civic dignitaries with streaky mascara. Our leaving was delayed due to so many people wanting to hug, and then we got back to the hotel to crash. Next morning the newspapers had nothing about the Swan or its effect on people. I guess the journalists may have got their answers but were keeping it quiet.

Late morning, we were back in the air and heading south to Naples and three shows later in the week. It was almost surreal the way we moved from one genre to another and back again.

We now had about seven weeks before I had another piano concert and could go home. I was wondering just what the second half of the tour would throw up. It may be something even stranger than the first half, but I doubted it.

We took a taxi from the airport to the hotel where we found the others at the poolside after we had checked in. I wondered if our hotels had been upgraded for our second part of the tour because they did seem to be slightly better than the first few.

Joyce told us that the ferry had been good. They had been given a six-berth cabin to stretch out in and the boat hadn’t rocked too badly. They had already checked out the venue and declared it all right.

Emily said that they had seen some of the sights but had spent a lot of time thinking about what we should do when we get home again. Everyone thought that it may be a good idea to miss putting a new album down and to concentrate on other projects for a while, in case the band became stale and boring.

I told them that the rehearsal room was available for whatever they wanted to do but that Jordan had told me that the studio was getting regular work now. We were pencilled in for September to December and January to March if we wanted to use it but there were several bands and solo singers in a waiting list. Obviously, Martyn and Tony were producing the goods and the word was spreading that a Stable Studio album was the way to go.

Over the next couple of days Pet and I relaxed after our concert, and I talked to Abigail about her solo album. She had written some songs with that in mind, and I had a few that we hadn’t worked on as Sisters. Pet said that she had a few that wouldn’t work as a group either, so we arranged to get together and put together an album.

Joyce and I also spoke about classical guitar pieces and that led on to her wanting to do a joint album with me that had Leyenda as a double piece with us alternating with solo items, and then finishing with another double. She said that she would research the known world for something we could do together, concentrating on more modern music.

Janet told me that by seeing the ancient sacred places on our travels, some vestige of her church youth had been reawakened, and that she was looking at the idea of a choir in her future. She said that Flora was all for it as there was a lot of music written across all faiths that was interesting and sounded beautiful, no matter if you believed or not.

She had been hitting the record shops in Naples and would see what she could find in Rome as well. She told me that the previous Sunday she had been to a local church recommended by a girl in reception where the choir had been magnificent. The sound almost made her cry. Helped, she said, by the smoke from the incense burner that made her eyes water anyway.

We played our jazz in the venue in Naples on the Thursday, Friday and Saturday and it went well, there being quite a lot of jazz fans in the city. Sunday, we went to Rome where we had a show that night as well as Monday and Tuesday.

In Rome on Monday morning Pet and I found the music shop where the Italian maker sold his instruments. It was a wonderland of violins, violas, cellos, and double basses. We were able to try out different instruments and brought the shop to a standstill with short bits of the Paganini with me playing a viola for the first time. We came away with a new violin each, as well as a new viola each, all from that same maker. The way we were going we would need a bigger container to ship our gear home when we ended the tour.

While in Rome we visited the Vatican. Well, you can’t go there without seeing the sights. Other than that, it was a reasonable set of gigs playing the jazz. The crowds were down a bit but were enthusiastic and you can’t have everything.

Milan was different. Here they had heard of the Stable Sisters and our four jazz nights were cut to two. The other two were in the same dance hall, as Sisters concerts. They were very well attended.

Then it was on to Turin for the last shows in Italy. While there we all visited the Chapel of the Holy Shroud just to say we had seen it, despite all those who say it’s a later fake.

Turin is a modern and vibrant city and our jazz shows had met with little interest. However, the promoters had spoken to Allan, and we found ourselves playing one night to a full crowd in a jazz club, and another two to big crowds in a dance hall as Stable Sisters again.

Allan had texted all of us to expect to be playing more like this through Germany because our albums had been selling well. He had been offered more money and better accommodation if we switched to pop for most of the shows. We didn’t mind, the jazz had been fun, but playing it repeatedly was losing the sparkle.

Our Italian driver left us in Turin, and we left that city with a German speaking driver who would take us up past Milan, and then through Switzerland. Then it was on to Munich and our first shows in Germany. The trip was wonderful and scenic, but the traffic was woeful on the alpine roads. We stopped overnight in a little Swiss town called Hard on the banks of the Bodensee. This had been factored in and was a lovely stop in a nice hotel with a good dinner followed by soft beds.

Our shows in Munich were for the last weekend of July which meant that we had just a month before we finished. It had been all right, so far, with enough down time to rest and recharge for everyone. Some of the time it had felt like a holiday, while other times had been hard work. At least we were all still talking to each other and laughing along with jokes.

When we arrived in Munich it was brought home to us that while Milan and Turin are the powerhouses of Italy, Germany is the powerhouse of Europe. Pet, with her deeper studies of music, suggested that our jazz concept was bound to be far less popular here than in the other three countries for one reason. That was that while France, Spain and southern Italy still had Romani roots, northern Italy had more modern leanings and Germany had all but wiped out the Romani influence in the World War.

Munich was to be four nights playing as Stable Sisters, and all four were with good crowds. We found out that we were known as Stallschwestern here and we got to sign lots of the CDs. One day I found a record shop and bought a dozen of these to take home. Pet was in heaven as Munich was the birthplace of Carl Orff, Richard Strauss, and Wagner. She dragged me and Emily around to the famous sights.

We were being treated like visiting pop stars and were taken out to visit the Nymphenburg Palace where we had a photo shoot for one of the German magazines. We also had another shoot with a fleet of cars as BMW had signed on for us to adorn their car advertising in Europe.

After Munich we went to Stuttgart, the birthplace of Pachelbel. It’s funny that most albums with his most famous composition have the cannon of the cover. A canon, which he wrote several, is a piece of music written for when priests enter a church and walk ceremonially along the aisle to the altar. It has nothing to do with guns.

Here we did two nights playing jazz at the Sommerfest and then went on to Frankfurt to play the Friday to Sunday as the Sisters. We were told about the shopping there and spent a few hours, along with a lot of Euros, wandering the Zeil and adjoining streets.

The following week we had two nights as Sisters in Hanover and then it was our penultimate city, four nights in Hamburg. The first two, Thursday and Friday, were in a jazz club where we did our jazz set for the last time. It was an interesting show both nights because Hamburg is a huge port, and the mix of nationalities is very wide. We were well supported by the audience dancing and clapping along with the beat. I think that, after Paris, they were the best jazz shows we had played.

The Saturday and Sunday were a different thing altogether. We were now getting well enough known in Germany to attract big crowds and the dance hall we played in was big and packed out both nights. Hamburg was the birthplace of Brahms, Mendelssohn, and Telemann. Pet, Emily, and I had been taken around to see the famous places but the one person who lived there, who most people would have heard of, was Nena.

She was the singer who brought us the earworm called “99 Luftballons”. When we were playing our Sisters gigs on those two nights, either Pet or I would bring in a snippet of that tune during a solo, and we got a big roar every time.

After Hamburg we had the third week of August in Berlin, our final stop. The shows were Wednesday to Sunday Allan and Helen flew in on Thursday and were going to stay for a short holiday to see me play the Rach 2 the weekend after the tour finished.

Etienne and Louise arrived Friday because they hadn’t seen us play in pop mode. The four shows were in a very large hall and every night was good. We played our standard set and then some. The Stallschwestern were swinging, the audience was jumping, and we all had a good time.

During the days we had interviews and photo opportunities for the local media, being taken around the tourist sites for pictures to be taken. We saw the Brandenburg Gate, Checkpoint Charlie, some lovely parks, and the Schloss Charlottenburg which was difficult to believe that it had been rebuilt from a ruin after the war.

We signed lots of albums and posters, and it was like being at home except that the name on the albums was different here. It finished on the Sunday, when the European promoters put on an afternoon party for us, followed by a lavish dinner. It was then that we found out that we had done a whole lot better than we had expected.

The European album sales had been good with a lot of our back catalogue being snapped up. The ticket sales had been better than expected with the jazz shows. The crowds that had come to Sisters shows in the last few weeks had been a bonus.

There was talk of us coming back sometime and maybe doing other countries, but we let all that sort of talk slide through to Allan to deal with. We were over it.

On Monday we loaded up a container with our equipment and I made doubly sure my new instruments were well padded for shipment.

That went off on a truck that afternoon and Tuesday morning I said farewell to the girls as the bus took them off to the airport for the flight home. For me it was a taxi to another hotel which the orchestra was paying for. I was back into the VIP treatment.

I had Wednesday and Thursday in rehearsal with the orchestra and we played Friday and Saturday night which was a fitting end to my time in Europe. The Rach 2 is a wonderful piece of music and is something that you can really get your teeth into. Both nights we had a good applause and I played one encore on the Friday and two on the Saturday. I had Sunday to rest and was in a taxi to the airport on Monday morning for my first-class trip home to get back to the farm, my family, and some peace and quiet.

Well, I say home but with Allan and Helen on board with me there was a stop-over in London where I was taken to a meeting with a noted conductor. He wanted to talk to us about a single concert as well as a part in the Proms Season next year.

Then it was another stop in Boston to see Kelly and Wilhelm about something next year with them as well. Richard was now a guest conductor in Vienna, something he had always yearned for. Everyone wanted me on the piano, and I started to think that this was starting to sketch out my future.

When we landed in Detroit I saw Jordan with Ali, and just dropped my bags as they rushed to hug me. Ali with her arms around my neck as I rose to be held by my true love. We had a session of hugs and kisses, and a few tears. Jordan retrieved my bags and led us out to the car waiting for us outside. He’d rented a limo and driver, the lovely man, and it was a smooth trip back to the farm.

We were all in the back with his arm around me as I cradled Alicia, who was jabbering away thirteen to the dozen about what had happened while I had been away. Much of it being what her piano teacher had been getting her to do with the thin-key piano.

She had also seen the small baby grand that had been delivered and was itching to play it when her hands got bigger. I looked and noticed just how big they were now, such long fingers for a nearly three-year-old.

We arrived at the farm, and it looked different but the same. There was a new board out the front that proclaimed that this was the home of The Stable Studio and the birthplace of the Stable Sisters. Another told the world that you could have your pet treated at the Elmstead Veterinary Clinic (the best in town), while yet another declared it as the Grosse Hydroponic Farm. The limo deposited us at the house where everyone else was waiting for us. There was Josie, Tony with the twins Martyn and Georgina, Martyn, Maureen and even the old vet and his wife. It was lucky that I had only come in from Boston because it was quite a party for a while.

I had a small case that I had been filling as we went from place to place, mainly things for Ali. There were dolls from each country, a wooden toy from Bavaria, snow domes, and fridge magnets from just about everywhere we’d stopped.

I’d bought Jordan a set of Lederhosen to go with the dirndl I had gotten for myself. There were things for just about everyone with the vet picking a snow dome from Switzerland which was a place he wanted to visit once he finally retired. I had posters that I had snaffled showing both Instability playing jazz and Stallschwestern the German pop group. I also had the copies of the Stallschwestern CD that I had bought which would be collectors’ items in the US.

Josie and Maureen had organized a meal, and when we had finished Ali had dozed off. Josie gave me a wink and said that I must be tired after all the travelling so Jordan and I had an early night which didn’t include a lot of sleep. I think we both may have missed each other over the last few months.

I was walking funny when I woke up to go for a pee. It was lucky that I had finished that and put a gown on because Ali banged on the door demanding that I come and listen to her play.

We had a little session as she showed me how far she had come, and I was amazed. With the thin-key piano she was now playing simple chords and was able to run up and down the keyboard like a concert pianist. I kneeled at the tiny grand and we played a few tunes together.

She had mastered a few of the Satie tunes and had even added some of the Stable Sisters piano parts to her repertoire. I heard Jordan finally get out of bed and we all went in for breakfast where Josie had a twin on each breast, and Tony was starting to get the cooking going.

I sat at the kitchen table with breakfast and a cup of coffee and just luxuriated in the fact that I was home again. It’s funny; when you’re younger you just think of it as a place to get away from. It takes an extended separation for you to realize that it’s a place where you have roots.

This was where I had played an awful lot of music in my time, where my parents had nurtured me, and where I was now surrounded by family. A strange sort of family, I must say. I had my husband, a child I had fathered, a sister-in-law who was the mother of my child and a growing number of people that I would not part with for any amount of money.

At last, I got to properly meet my daughters’ half-siblings, now nearly five months old. Georgina had the Sanders look but Martyn looked more like Tony. Maureen and Martyn had come in and I was brought up to date with the studio business. I told Martyn and Tony that we were looking at a few different projects to see out the year, with the first being a solo album for Abigail.

I got to look at the photos of Jordan at his graduation and he took me out to the clinic to see his certificates in his office. While there he told me that his mentor wanted to retire at the end of the year so he needed to see if he could get an assistant and a receptionist. There was plenty of time to advertise and interview, and he wasn’t going to rush it.

Over September Pet, Emily and Abigail came into the rehearsal room and we put together the bones of the solo album.

I also spent a lot of time with Ali and her piano teacher, who was helping me understand there were things I shouldn’t be doing on the piano, but she made no attempt to make me stop because it was what made me unique.

Ali and I spent a couple of days with Martyn in the studio, with me on the concert grand, and Ali on both her thin-key piano and on the tiny grand. We put together an album of twelve tracks as a birthday present (one of many) for her to give to friends.

It was jokingly called “Alicia Sanders and her Mom” and was some Satie pieces, simple etudes, and we rounded it off with the “Moonlight Sonata”. Martyn was able to improve the tone of the smaller pianos to match the tone of the concert grand. The result filled me with pride.

All I contributed to it was the more complicated chords, and those bits that were at each end of the longer keyboard. It was amazing how well we played together, almost as if we were one brain with four hands. Ali almost hugged me to death when she heard the finished CD.

Her third birthday was quite a bash, my parents coming back for the event and Brad and Alicia coming over. Allan, Helen, and the rest of the “Aunts” brought along their partners. Ali looked like a princess and loved every moment; all the guests being given a copy of “her” CD with a proper cover picture of her sitting at the tiny grand in a long gown and looking very regal.

I think that it was this achievement that was her best present and her piano teacher even asked for her to sign it, which she did with a scrawled ‘Ali’, adding to her day, and instilling the joy of getting recognition that makes a simple person become a performer.

In the studio during October, we finally got to record the Abigail album and use the full suite of enhancements that Martyn had assembled with the multiple track recording. We did each song as a four-piece with Pet on piano, me on rhythm guitar and Emily on her keyboard. We then added tracks with both me and Pet on violin and then on viola. Then we had Janet in to add several tracks of percussion and, finally, Joyce with both a bass and a lead guitar.

By the time that Martyn and Tony had done their magic we were astounded at what we had produced. He had multiplied our strings tracks to sound like a full strings section and the resulting album was a lush and enticing sound that backed Abigail singing at her best.

When Allan finally heard the master, he was almost beside himself with excitement. Because the album was all about love, in all its facets, it needed Abigail to have a photo shoot for the cover notes that was set in properly romantic places. Allan flew her to Paris, Rome, and Madrid where she was photographed in front of various famous romantic places, some-times with handsome men.

The album was called “Abigail – Love Songs” and was released in December in the US, in time for Christmas, and didn’t take long to get into the charts. European versions were released the following year with suitable changes to the language and photos on the cover. It was all hers, none of us Sisters were separately named except as the Stable Sisters as the backing. If Martyn had been regaining his reputation before, this cemented his position near the top of the tree as far as producers went.

Jordan had put his jobs notice in the local papers, and on the internet, with not a lot of success. Of the locals that had replied most were known to either him or the old vet and none were people they could work with.

There had been four from the internet and three of them wanted the money to come in for an interview. The last was doubly interesting. It was from a couple who wrote from near Los Angeles.

One was an experienced receptionist while the other said that they had vet qualifications but from another country. The odd thing was that there was a recommendation letter from Dianne who said that both were known to her. She thought that they may be what we were looking for.

Jordan called the number they had given and organized a time and date for them to come and speak to us. I made sure that I was around and when I saw the taxi pull into the parking area, I went to greet them.

One was a tall and slim girl with a lovely smile and blonde hair which was beginning to be replicated on the baby in the arms of the other; a dark-haired girl who had a slightly European look about her. I shook their hands and welcomed them, introducing myself as Edweena.

Marianne Gregory © 2023