Andre Rieu: My orchestra travels with its own cooks

Most orchestral players complain about the difficulty of maintaining a balanced regular diet, especially when they are on the road.

No so in the Andre Rieu orchestra. From a Forbes interview:

You asked how a day looks like. So, we travel with nine big trucks. We play back-to-back, so the trucks arrive at 7:00 in the morning at the venue and they start to build. We are still in the other city where we played the day before in the hotel, then we leave by bus. We arrive at the venue, then everybody has something to eat or plays their instrument, and then we have a soundcheck. Every day I do a soundcheck because we have to adapt the sound to all the halls.

Then we have a meal together with our own cooks who travel with us because we want to be healthy, of course, and then I go to sleep two hours before the concert so I’ll be fresh onstage. Then we have a concert for three hours, and after the concert, we have an after snack because I told you I was in a classical orchestra where all the musicians after a beautiful symphony of Beethoven, the last note, the last applause, and then they all ran home. I love my wife, but when we play together a beautiful concert, I cannot go to sleep. I have to speak with my people and drink a glass of wine, so that’s what a day looks like.

Maybe that’s what keeps them smiling.