Day 2: The first concert

On Sunday, everyone woke up at their host families. After breakfast, we met at the First Methodist Church of Mesa. There, we attended the church service, which was exactly what you would expect from an American church service. Today, however, it included music by Schütz, Purcell, and Mendelssohn.

In the morning, we put the finishing touches on our program for our concert before taking a lunch break.

The highlight of the day was definitely the concert in the afternoon with the 'Orpheus Men's Choir'. The approximately 90 male voices enchanted us with a piece called 'pirate song'. And yes, there were real pirates on stage.

The program also included performances of Samual Barber's 'Agnus Dei' and Eric Whitacre's 'Leonardo dreams of his flying Machine'.

After the successful concert, we spent some time at the community center enjoying food and drinks and deepening our friendship with the singers of the 'Orpheus Men's Choir'.

In the evening, everyone returned to their host families to spend the last evening together.

On Monday morning, we will take the bus to Flagstaff in the desert, where we will have a workshop with Dr. Edith Copley, the director of the choirs at Northern Arizona University, in preparation for the concert with the 'Shrine of the Age Choir'.