Friday, December 19, 2008

Concert



The hairiest part about last night's concert was getting there.

I had planned well, I thought. I went to my 4pm lesson in concert black attire, with dinner (Zone-friendly string cheese + 2 slices luncheon ham + medium honeycrisp apple + walnuts and roasted squash seeds) packed in my bag. I figured if I left by 5:30 I could make my 6:30 call, as it is usually 30-40 minutes in rush hour.

Lesson was great, BTW. The student before me ran over, by design, I discovered. There was no student after me, as T- planned on running over with me on the other end. So I had a half hour of observing one of T-'s old students who had come back for an advanced brush-up on Haydn C. Then I had a little over an hour for my lesson, G major scale concentrating on intonation in the upper 2 octaves, and revisiting Lee #1. I've been working on memorizing it, a topic for another post, and it is amazing how much new technique gets overlaid each time I have a lesson on this etude.

Anyway, I left the lesson room at 5:20, and was exiting the parking lot by 5:30. Then I ran into one nail-biting back-up after another. The details don't sound as exciting today, but I was sweating, and grateful to end up only 10 minutes late for call. We have had horrible traffic since the snow started seriously falling last week. I surely hope people remember how to drive here again, soon.

The concert was anticlimactic. DH caught this pic, so I can show you the set-up. The orchestra is in a pit formed by surrounding elevated walkways, where speakers, singers and dancers moved above us. You can see the front row of cellos on the big screen - my head is in the leftmost corner.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

I was one minute late for quartet because I got caught in the Celine Dion concert traffic grid lock downtown. 8 cycles at one traffic light. I understand the nail biting part.

MMG said...

I would hate worrying about being late too. What a fancy concert setup! Imagine having your orchestra section blown up onto a huge screen! Glad everything worked out.

Anonymous said...

I MISSED it because of the bad weather :( ..... money lost. I am so upset, I was driving for 4 hours and missed it, usually takes me 30 minutes. Was waiting for ONE YEAR and my MONEY :((((

gottagopractice said...

Oh, Anon, that does sound like a bad night. So sorry you missed your concert, but it can't have been mine - there was no charge for attendance.

gottagopractice said...

I checked my sitemeter stats, and the light dawns. It was the Celine Dion concert you missed. Bummer.

Maricello said...

Wow, it is hard to imagine that this concert could be anticlimactic. It looks very impressive. I have never seen anything like this before, with the close-ups of the cellos!

Glad all went well once you got there.