Elizabeth at the Joshua Bell concert!

Updated: May 18, 2023

I ditched my family on March 21 to go to Barcelona with my roommates (Rose, Alana, and Jisenia) and Kayla! Alana's uncle is a violinist--his name is Josh Bell--and he was having a concert in Barcelona, and Alana and her mom very kindly invited us (big shoutout to them, sponsors of this post fr). It was such a cool and fun experience.

We went right from class (scholar first) to the train station to go to Barcelona. We'd brought our bags with us to school. We changed and got ready on the train. I made some friends on the train--there were two little kids, a boy and a girl, in front of us who would not stop turning around to stare at me, the girl especially. I kept waving and smiling. They were shy, but I kept at it and pretty soon we were besties. I had the girl pick the colors for my eyeshadow (with assistance from me, I made faces so she’d pick what I wanted). It was so fun. I realized I miss interacting with kids.

Anyway, we arrived at the train station like 30 minutes before the concert started, so we went straight to the concert hall. And from here everything happened so fast. So we showed up, Alana reunited with her mom, and then we went backstage to drop off our bags. I thought we would just throw them in some back hall/corner, but then all the sudden we were in Alana's uncle's dressing room and meeting him and leaving our bags two feet away from his 300 year old Stradivarius. Crazy. My friends said once we left that I almost knocked over said priceless violin with my bag. I didn't even notice it in the room, but they said it was by me, but it was in its case and like one foot off the ground so it would've been fine. Still, great moment for me. Then we went and sat down. This is the concert hall; it was so beautiful.

The concert was so cool. I knew I'd love it because I love anything like this, but this really blew me away. Maybe my personal subjective favorite of the things I've seen here. Here's the program:

L. VAN BEETHOVEN: Obertura Coriolà, op. 62

F. MENDELSSOHN: Concerto for Violin and Orchestra, Op. 64

L. VAN BEETHOVEN: Symphony no. 7, op. 92

They were all awesome. The first piece was the shortest; Josh played it with the orchestra. The second piece was my favorite by far. The orchestra played and then Josh was a soloist. The combination of the orchestra and the solo was unreal. Josh was really good. I should've been ready for that, but I was not. Idk something happened to me during this one, I transcended, I felt every emotion. It was wild. Also he broke a string, which was funny (it was Alana's fault, she manifested it).

Then it was intermission, and we went back to Josh's dressing room to talk to him for a few minutes. I thought he'd be wired in, so it was very nice of him to talk to us before the concert and at intermission. The next piece was the Beethoven, Josh just conducted that one and didn't play. Everyone who knew anything about music (Alana, her mom, Kayla) were telling me that this one was going to be the best and I'd like it even more; that didn't happen. It was still obviously incredible, but I'm Mendelssohn nation. Watching the orchestra play was my favorite part of the last piece. The were very physical and moved around a lot, and towards the end they were smiling at each other and interacting. Not that I've seen a lot of orchestras, but I'd never seen an orchestra do that. It was so neat. You couldn't help but smile with them. Kayla asked Josh about it (and she actually has seen a lot of orchestras and hadn't seen that ever either) because she was wondering if they were following his direction (he's a very physical player too) or if they just picked up on his style without him instructing them to do that, or if they're just Spanish and they do that. He said he didn't tell them to do that and US orchestras tend to be a little more rigid.

After the concert, we went backstage, talked to some people, hung out for a little bit, and then walked to the hostel. It was like five minutes away (I picked it for that reason, good move). We checked in and dropped off our bags and then went to dinner.

We were going to eat with Alana's mom--her name is Toby--and Josh, but they ended up having to eat with some fancy orchestra people, so we got a kids' table, which was honestly probably even better. We had so much fun, and Toby and Josh came over to our table a few times to hang out for a bit. Best of both worlds. We were also at this restaurant forever.