We spent last weekend in Vancouver for a quick tour with a house concert and a conference.  We were pretty much in love with the whole city, and can’t wait to go back.

On Friday night, Barbara Lyall and Kath Poole hosted us in a really fun house concert.  Kath’s home is an architect-designed modern beauty that seemed to have been created with house concerts in mind.  There was plenty of room for the marimba and the audience.

Brent Alley, who really should be considered a third co-host, took this nice photo of the audience:

We are so grateful to our hosts for introducing us to their friends, to their friends for coming to the concert, and to our super-fans (those would be my family members!) who came a long way to see us and to help out!

Saturday was dedicated to British Columbia Touring Council’s Pacific Contact, their annual booking conference.  We started out doing a mini-showcase (a “pitch/perform”) in the morning, compressing 300 years of preludes into five minutes.  The rest of the day was spent getting to know lots of new people–artists, presenters, consultants, and the amazing staff of BCTC as well.  It was the most friendly conference we’ve ever been to, and we hope to return to BC for more performances and yes, to go back to the conference too!

The “app folks” at BCTC were running a photo contest as part of the conference…the conference app had a nifty feature that would take a picture and frame it with the Pacific Contact  logo.  When we returned from lunch to find my parents “guarding” the marimba for us, I took this photo:

 And guess what?  The photo won!  The prize was an iPad mini!!!  Talk about an unforeseen benefit!  I passed the mini on to my parents who really did deserve a prize for all their help ferrying us and the marimba all over town.  I submitted this “post-script” photo of me teaching them to use it: