Day one in France
 
After a late night flight to Paris from JFK in NYC I arrived around 7:20am in the morning Paris time or 1:20am NYC time. From there everyone on the plane was herded onto buses for the terminal. From there I got the RER into Paris and had some fun finding the Saint-Lazare station from where I was to get the train to Rouen. It was a 1 hour trip to Rouen, that was very pleasant. Checked into my hotel which is very nice and simple. It has a high speed internet connection, video and audio podcasts should be hitting the web tomorrow. The hotel has an amazing view of the Cathedral which is right out my window and isn't too far a walk from St. Ouen where we are recording. My recording engineer from Germany, Chris Frommen, and Stephen Tharp drove from their visit to the Cathedral in Cologne. The minute Stephen got here he was left off at St. Godard which has a 1884 Cavaille-Coll to practice. I met Chris to help him unload his mini van at St. Ouen into the sacristy which is serving as our control room. The organ at St. Ouen is one of the most famous and excellent pipe organs in the world a 1890 Cavaille-Coll. Marcel Dupré's father was the organist there for many year. I am thrilled to be involved with 2 recordings of the organ this week. One of Stephen Tharp for Aeolus and one of Daniel Roth for JAV. St. Ouen used to be an abbey church built in the 14th century. It is one of 3 large Catholic church buildings in city of Rouen. It has now been decommissioned as a church, though the state does much to up keep the structure and the organ is protected by the organist. The evening wound down when Stephen met us for dinner at 10pm, after 5 hours of practicing. Joe Vitacco
Recording St. Ouen & St. Sulpice
Tuesday, May 2, 2006