I’m travelling with the orchestra to Toronto tomorrow morning for a concert at Roy Thomson Hall. It should be an easy tour – bus down, concert, sleep, bus back. Simple, right?

Regardless of how many tours I’ve done or how long they are, I still have the same uneasy feeling the day before we leave. There’s a bit of pressure knowing 70 people are depending on you to make sure everything runs smoothly. Some of my fears are well founded, based on negative experiences on past trips, while most of my worries are completely irrational.

In order, here’s what I worry about on tour.

Buses  Nothing gives me nightmares more than buses. While most of the buses we get are nice, clean, modern coaches, I have had the unpleasant experience of getting crappy buses. The door didn’t work on one of them, you couldn’t turn the heat off on another, one of the buses in Mexico didn’t have a bathroom while another broke down outside Mexico City. I practically beg for the best coaches a company has, but sometimes you are simply at the mercy of the faceless dispatcher.

Drivers are another variable. Most are nice, but some don’t appreciate that the orchestra has a schedule to keep. One guy stopped by his home to pick up some luggage, another guy wanted to do a little detour on the way to Montreal to pick up some upholstery. Unbelievable.

I take notice of buses almost every day as I drive around town. I know which companies have nice Prevost H3-45′s and which are using MCI Mirage. The best buses by far were in Germany. They were big and comfortable, with a washroom downstairs by the rear exit so nobody was forced to sit by the toilet. The driver also sold water and beer at the front of the bus. Very civilized.

Hotels  I try to put the orchestra in nice hotels. It’s tiring being on tour, and I think it’s a definite morale-booster when you walk into a really well-appointed hotel.

Ideally, I arrive at the hotel about 20 minutes before the group. This gives me time to collect all the keys, check them against the master list, and fix any errors that the front desk has made. If some rooms aren’t ready, it gives me a few minutes to look sternly at the front desk staff and implore (beg) them to get me more keys before the group arrives.

My favourite tour hotel? I have a soft spot for the Grand Hotel in Locarno, Switzerland. It wasn’t the nicest hotel, but it had Old World charm. The worst? Probably the Hotel Moderno in Pontassieve, Italy. It was moderno in about 1924…

Planes  Fortunately we’re not flying on this little tour, so I’m not freaking out about that. I am always nervous about flying commercially with the orchestra as you can never get a straight answer about whether some instruments will be allowed on board. It’s never gone horribly wrong, but I have had to intervene on occassion to make sure a cello actually gets a seat.

Back in the “good old days”, I would show up at the airport an hour before the group and get all the boarding passes. When the orchestra arrived, I’d hand out the boarding passes, the musicians would drop their luggage, and we’re done. Needless to say, that doesn’t happen anymore.

Those are the three big things I worry about. Of course, there’s also stuff like visas, sick musicians, damaged instruments, missing pants (don’t ask), blah blah blah that can really ruin your day.

So it’s about 12 hours until showtime. Will Coach Canada come through with nice buses and put a smile on my face? I’ll keep you posted.

I have a love / hate relationship with touring. It’s probably the most stressful part of my job – I worry for weeks in advance of a tour about whether buses will show up when they’re supposed to, whether the hotel rooms will be ready when we arrive, what musicians will get sick and who we’ll get to replace them, etc. I have recurring tour dreams about things going wrong. In one of them, I’m leading the orchestra on foot through the dark wet streets of New York City looking for a hotel that I haven’t booked. Oops.On the other hand, there are some nice perks to touring. I get to hear the orchestra in different halls, meet colleagues from other orchestras, and attend some pretty good receptions. Since I started I’ve seen Canada from coast to coast, and gone to some interesting places abroad.One of the best perks is hotel room upgrades. As tour manager, I’m spending anywhere between $10,000 and $40,000 on rooms at a given hotel. So, the sales manager will often give me a nicer room as a thank-you. I’ve had amazing rooms in Chicago, Vancouver, Victoria, Guanajuato, and Hannover. Sometimes the manager will leave something in your room – chocolates, wine, a fruit and cheese platter. Of course, there was also the free adult film channel in Edmonton back in ’99.So, I was quite happy to walk into a Jr. Suite at the Hilton in Québec after the bus ride from Chicoutimi yesterday. King-size bed, tub big enough for two, and a great view of the old city from the 15th floor. Plus, a little assortment of maple syrup products that I’ll toss in the suitcase beside the jar of blueberry jam I got from the Holiday Inn Saguenay.

Yesterday was our last full day in Chicoutimi. The orchestra had two student matinee concerts during the day, and I think they went really well. We had an actor playing the role of Mozart and two violin soloists. The music was pretty varied – a bit of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, Haydn’s Farewell Symphony, an excerpt from the Four Seasons, and even a Canadian fiddle piece. It’s always fun watching the little kids come up on stage to play their recorders with the orchestra.The one thing you can count on with touring is that things never go as planned. For example, our guest Concertmaster for the student matinee got stuck in Montreal on Sunday night (Air Canada messed up her connection). She called as I was enjoying a dinner with some friends to say she wouldn’t be able to make the concert the next morning.Luckily we have another guest Concertmaster doing the main tour concerts, so Nelson (our Personnel Manager) talked to her and she graciously agreed to fill in. She even learned the big fiddle solo and nailed it during the concert. Luck seems to play a big part in solving tour problems…Today is the longest day on tour. Our buses leave in about an hour for Québec, then there’s a short rehearsal and an evening concert, followed by a reception. I’m already stressed out about whether the rooms will be ready at the Hilton when we arrive this afternoon. There’s nothing like having dozens of tired musicians sitting in a lobby waiting for you to get their room key…

I’ve got a few minutes between Student Matinee concerts to post a few thoughts about the first full day on tour.The orchestra had a matinee concert in Chicoutimi. It would have been nice to have a free afternoon as the sky was clear and blue and it warmed up enough to melt away the snow and slush. It did mean that we had a free evening, which is always a good thing on tour.The Auditorium Dufour was probably built in the 60′s and has that brutalistic pre-fab concrete feel to it. It was a dry hall, but not nearly as bad as some I’ve heard on tour. The audience was very appreciative and everyone seemed happy.The Holiday Inn Saguenay is a nice enough hotel, but it sits in the middle of a huge parking lot with nothing more than a Tim Hortons for entertainment. Luckily one of my colleagues has a rental vehicle and a bunch of us escaped to Chicoutimi for what turned out to be a pretty good meal in a hip little restaurant.I’m getting sick, which I knew would happen. Bronwen, Aidan and Kieran were all sick last week, and I figured it would strike me during the tour. Sure enough, my throat is sore and my voice has dropped about half an octave. I think I’ll have Subway for dinner and get to bed early.