There are 3 things I love about these vacations. First, we get to visit wonderful places away from the hustle of everyday life. Second, I get to play with the video when I get back. Third, I get to write music to go with that video. These are the pieces written for our 2015 trip to Alsace, Lorraine, and Luxembourg, with a final jaunt to Chantilly. I composed 5 large pieces for the main stops on the trip: "Reims," "Colmar," "Strasbourg,"" Luxembourg" (ancestral home of the Freymann clan!) and "Verdun." Then, I wrote a single idea as an interlude piece for the day trips between the big stops. While you will undoubtedly hear themes revisited during these 4 pieces ("The Marne," "Koenigsbourg Castle," "Maginot Line," "Chantilly"), the pieces ultimately morphed into their own mood largely under the weight of the subject matter of the visit. The theme is best laid out in Chantilly, but this happy piece (in A major) hardly fit the mood of the Maginot Line. So I moved the hey to C#minor (utilized in the happier versions also) and altered all the instrumentation to industrial (metallic) sounds. This, with the haunting voice of our french tour guide creates a version that hardly resembles its progenitor. Again, I have built pieces based on spoken word captured during the vacation - tour guides, people on the street. Some songs (like "Colmar") specifically were built around those spoken inflections, others (like "Maginot Line") are more loosely inspired. The videos are viewable on my YouTube Channel at: www.youtube.com/user/Studieauxman