The city called Agra has a special meaning to me, because a big bass clarinet solo in one of the movements of the Far East Suite  is called after Agra. In that city there is the Taj Mahal, a world famous monument with incomparable beauty. And we’re going to visit it!Of course I hope that, by seeing the Taj Mahal, I get a new perspective which will help me to play the solo even better. Just outside the city of Agra a man enters the bus jolly introduces himself as our host for the day. We didn’t expect him of course, but he assures us that he will not charge us any costs, because we are his guests. By the way, his name is Cash. I don’t care, as long as he tells me everything I need to know about the Taj. The bus brings us to a parking place where we change to another bus which drives on electricity. This is for not damaging the building. It brings us to the gate, where we are attacked by the local population who also wants to help us, but, pity them, we already have a guide. Cash tells us about the origin of the Taj Mahal: built as a Mausoleum in the 17^th century, etc., etc. The marble is etc., etc. I absorb everything he says and wonder if I ever saw anything more beautiful than this. The Taj Mahal changes colour several times a day and even after a shower it seems to have a special beauty.   “The Taj Mahal has many faces”,  Cash concludes his story. We comfortably sit down and watch the building for almost an hour. We see a group of monkeys walk across the square, a small boat on the river as the Taj changes color in the sunset.During the five hour car drive back to Delhi I wonder if my solo will have changed. Jelte

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 11th, 2009 at 6:26 pm and is filed under Far East, India, Jelte Althuis, musicians. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.