[Lawrence] Our involvement (perhaps obsession?) with André Rieu and the Johann Strauss Orchestra began in the early spring of 2004. My good friend and co-worker Sarah has been an André fan since late 2001 when she and her neighbor Helene went to Germany and heard his music. Sarah brought back a couple of CDs and told me how enjoyable they were and offered to let me listen to them. I politely declined…Strauss waltzes: not really my cup of tea. Sarah does not typically shop where André CDs are sold, so she asked me to be on the lookout for his CDs whenever I might be shopping. Over time I found a few CDs for her, but I never listened to any of them. During a business trip together I did some shopping and found a couple more CDs for her, and also found the ‘Live in Dublin’ DVD and purchased it too. I knew that Sarah didn’t have a DVD player at the time but figured that she could watch it on my DVD player in my car on our trip back home. Well, we hit the road the next morning and started to play the DVD. It only took about 45 minutes of listening until I was hooked. It has been downhill ever since.

When I got back home I could hardly wait to share André with Pauline. We watched ‘Dublin’. She was hooked too. Pauline's sister Patricia and her husband Howard, who live in Grand Prairie, Texas, came to visit a couple of weekends later. Typically we will watch a movie on the big screen TV at home, but this time we introduced them to André with ‘Dublin’. Good move. They were hooked. The next day Howard and I went out shopping, looking for a DVD player and sound system, and a week later he bought a DVD home theater setup.

Since then we have bought virtually every CD and DVD that André has made. We rarely watch our DVD movies any more, preferring to watch and listen to André. There is nothing like André’s music to take the edge off a less than perfect day, or make a good day even better. We try to introduce André’s music to guests in our home and no one who has ever watched his DVDs with us has been less than thrilled to experience the delights of André and the JSO.

When I learned that André was planning his 2005 Spring USA tour and had scheduled his first concert in Dallas, I was on the phone immediately with sponsor KERA and made a pledge for three pair of tickets for the May 1st show. One pair was for Pauline and myself; the second pair I bought as a 50th Anniversary gift for Pauline's sister Patricia and husband Howard, and the third pair were for Sarah and Helene who had started this whole business in the first place.

We have made new friends because of André. I visit the various André fan sites including this great site (thanks go to Sally Chaney, one of those new friends, for AndreRieuFans.com), and the Yahoo
André Rieu discussion group (http://launch.groups.yahoo.com/group/AndreRieu). I posted a question to the Yahoo group asking what a live concert is really like. Ruth Morgan replied and told me about the 7 concerts that she had attended. Ruth and I began to exchange emails discussing the latest André news, and soon we were friends. Occasionally we would talk on the phone and Pauline and Ruth became friends, too. Ruth pledged KERA for a pair of tickets, which made the Dallas concert her 8th. Ruth came up with the idea of getting together with a few fans for a dinner the night before the concert. On the day before the concert we finally met Ruth and her husband Jim, and spent a great day together, ending with the fans dinner that night when twenty of us got together and made new friends. Details of the fans dinner will be posted here later in a section called ‘Fans Dinner’. The concert the next night was terrific, of course, but speaking for myself, I enjoyed the fun and companionship of the fans dinner just about as much as I did the concert.

We look forward to more André/JSO fun in the future. In particular, we are hoping that there will be another USA tour in the spring of 2006 and that there will be a return to Dallas and possibly Houston. We will be first in line for tickets, and will plan another fans dinner. See you there!

[Pauline] For over a year now, we have been enjoying the beautiful music of André Rieu and his fabulous orchestra that emanates from our big-screen TV and our car CD players. I don’t remember the last movie we watched and listening to a particular radio talk show while coming home in the afternoon is almost a thing of the past. It is much more soothing after a day in the classroom to listen to André and the JSO. This is not to say that we enjoy him exclusively, because that is not so. In fact his DVD’s have led us to other musicians that we were not familiar with because he shares his stage (at least in Europe) with other talented guest artists. So our musical DVD/CD library has grown thanks to André and my husband who’s the shopper in the family.

As a fourth-grade teacher, I showed a part of the “Dublin Concert” to our school. That was the first DVD we saw and it remains one of my favorites. I chose that one to show to the students because I wanted them to hear good music presented in a fun way. I thought they would especially enjoy the “Bull and the Lady in Red” and Carla’s animated doll. They did!

It was so much fun meeting and being with Ruth and Jim Morgan the day before the Dallas concert and to meet all the others who came to the “Fans’ Dinner” that Saturday evening. We met and dined with terrific people we would never have met any other way. And I have faces and mannerisms and real personalities to remind me of the ones who were web site, e-mail, or telephone friends. Of course being at the live concert in Grand Prairie, Texas, where my sister and dear brother-in-law live, was great--like a video come to life. The comments that André made at the concert about the American liberation of Holland was more meaningful, because at the dinner the night before, we had heard Jerry Stover’s story about spending one night in Maastricht as a part of the liberating forces. I like the fact that André Rieu publicly shows his appreciation to America for helping to bring freedom to the world. I love his “Lost Heroes”!

I hope to attend more concerts in the future. Perhaps next time we will have “Meet and Greet” tickets. But thanks to Ruth Morgan, we were able to “meet and greet” some wonderful people who are big André fans like we are including Sally Chaney and Dan the Banner Man!

 

Lawrence & Pauline