First off, Tuesday night a friend invited me to join her for an organ concert. The organist was Paul Jacobs, who is a big deal in organ circles, but since I don't have much familiarity with these folks, was unknown to me. But I know him now! What a show he put on! In a varied program from Bach to Mozart to modern composers also unknown to me, he was fabulous, putting in virtuoso turns with hands and feet on the lovely organ you see above. A highlight was a last-minute program substitution of "Pomp and Circumstance," which transcended its familiarity and made it really shine.
Special angle of this concert: it was held at Laurel Heights Methodist Church, where I wait for the bus to work most mornings! If I had once known about the amazing instrument just a few yards from my bus stop steps, I had forgotten about it. Just say that I won't take the handsome classic building so much for granted any more!
Next up, a production of "Pirates of Penzance," a favorite G-and-S romp, right on the St. Mary's campus and starring several of my choir buddies. They were terrific!—sounding musically gorgeous, and handling the difficult linguistic tricks and turns like pros, I was so proud of them. Here they are in the rambunctious, joyous, if totally nonsensical, finale:
I'm still hearing the catchy, cheerful tunes from the piece on my mental record player. And nothing can brighten your day more emphatically, take my word for it. Or give a listen to a sample.
Then, to cap off the musical week, we had symphony tickets for Saturday. Here's the way the stage looked from our seats—high up, but a perfect vantage point.
A vantage point, that is, to be able to watch our extremely talented and lovely niece, English horn principal, who had a absolutely gorgeous duet with the pianist in one of the program's pieces. Yes, we had advance notice that this would be a good night to see her featured, but the whole varied program—Copland, Ravel, and Mozart—was all good.
We were, however, especially happy to get to see her shine. And it won't be the last time. She's got some good gigs coming up in the spring, too. So there will be more live music in our future. Although I'm not sure I'll have another week as chock full of it as this one!
Henry has a post about our night at the symphony, with more pictures, here.
No comments:
Post a Comment