Nendaz

We had this one, a wonderful summer where Natalie, uh, Grana, who is, uh, another member of our faculty, she inspired, uh, particularly her student, Sean Slatter, to come and, uh, he was preparing.

He had been studying with her and preparing for, um, a competition in Nendaz, Switzerland.

So in comes Sean and a couple of his alphorn, uh, cohort to Cormot.

And kind of my own, you know, love at first sight with the alphorn was more about, um, my relationship to it as a teaching tool.

Mm-hmm.

That you look at what has happened with Sierra, uh, that over the last year, the growth that she's had in being able to go to Switzerland and play at Nendaz, what she's learned with fundraising and, you know, grant writing and all of the, the things, the opportunities that this has given her, it hasn't just been about her play, her performance, her program as a French horn student.

It's been about so much more than that.

No, that's absolutely right.

So then this beautiful Marissod F-sharp, um, alphorn that our dear Natalie says, "You know, it, it had to find its way to you, Stasia.

It found you.

It was, it, you were destined, it was destined to be yours." So then I had an instrument that I had brought, and then I had this Swiss alphorn from Nendaz that I then had to find a way to bring home, and what an incredible joy, you know, to bring literally back, like Cinderella's slipper after the ball.

I had the F-sharp alphorn from the Nendaz Festival-