Every once in a while we all need to reminded to live in the moment and do something just not in our normal routine. Though I’m ‘into’ the arts, I’m not usually quite this into the arts scene in town. I suppose it started Friday night with the university orchestra concert – fabulous! Night on Bald Mountain was the opening number – ah… the innocent days of Fantasia watching…but to incredible to see live! Saturday I had a few girlfriends over and we carved pumpkins and talked about art which was cool. One of them is taking an art class right now, the other’s mom was an art curator, and the other paints once in a while just for fun.
Sunday evening I went to a dance recital with Tweek. Some of it was very, very good! Other moments were a little too ‘granola-getting-in-touch-with-my-inner-child-weird-abstractness’ that made me want to drink 2 glasses of white wine, which I did. The guest musician….*sigh*…I should have known by looking at the list of music she was going to sing that it was not going to be the highlight of the evening. Who starts a set with a Leonard Cohen song BESIDES Leonard Cohen? Famous Blue Raincoat followed by Joni Mitchell’s Blue then When Sunny Gets Blue by Segal and Fisher… really? I get the theme – Blue. I get it. Enough already.
Last night Tweek and I decided to go to the symphony which was brilliant! I can’t believe I’d never been to the symphony in town before. It was truly excellent. Berlioz, Stravinsky (Piano Concerto with Winds! 
) and then the headliner: Holst’s Planets. Stravinsky was presented as a mini lecture recital which I appreciated. I even heard a man a few rows behind me remark that he’d found a new appreciation for Stravinsky now. That was the point so yay! The Planets was presented in conjunction with a video of images and animations created from NASA data that was set to the music. The creator, Dr. José Francisco Salgado, gave a brief discussion about how the images came to be and some things that we be aware of – like the fact that all the sun ‘animation’ was actually video of the sun and not animation at all. COOL! His hope for this project was a merger of visual and musical beauty that would compliment, not overpower one another. I would say it was a totally successful venture. It was a little like Fantasia in a way but so much more exciting with a live orchestra!
Tonight, it’s time for the theatre part of the arts (if you’re keeping track I’ve covered visual art, music, and dance so far) because tonight it’s time for a Romeo & Juliet. My tickets were just dropped off for me and apparently, the group of us are sitting in the front row. Little disturbing when there is a ‘potential nudity’ warning. Just sayin’…
1 Comment
November 3, 2009 at 3:01 pm
Sounds fantastic! I’m glad you are taking advantage of the local arts scene and finding time to hang out with good friends.