When I woke up this morning at around 7:25 am in order to practise a bit before my dress rehearsal with the Elgar Concerto here in Spokane, my first act was to turn the cellphone on. I am not a big cellphone guy, which means I also don’t get much calls, since I don’t answer my phone very often. I don’t like the phone, turn it off as often as possible, so when I saw that there was a message I immediately checked it since I don’t actually receive many calls (people learn pretty quickly that it’s worthless to call and they rather send me mails). It was the message of my father telling me that my mother had managed to finally leave this world after a three-year-long struggle with ALS (Lou-Gehrig disease). (more…)