In Which She Takes The Boy To A Concert

On Sunday afternoon the boy and I packed up and headed out for the West Island Youth Symphony Orchestra's free concert called "1910 - A Celebration in Music," programmed to celebrate the city of Beaconsfield's centenary. The last time I heard the WIYSO was, erm, sixteen years ago, when I was looking for a cello teacher. Not only was this a chance for me to actually attend a concert (imagine! live orchestral music that I wasn't playing!), it was an opportunity to share a concert-going experience with my son. And finally, I'd also have the chance to see my new conductor in action with a different group. I explained to the boy that this orchestra was made up of kids, and he immediately asked if he could join. I told him that these were older kids, but in four three years (holy cats) he would be eligible to join the junior orchestra, if he liked.

I let him choose where we sat in the auditorium (on the cello side, halfway between the wall and the aisle; we had the whole row to ourselves), and he explored the fold-down seats and asked all sorts of questions about the theatre (he thought we were going to a movie theatre, for some reason). When the lights went down for the orchestra to tune, he caught sight of the conductor just offstage, and he turned to me. "It's Stewart!" he said with great excitement, and I had to laugh; he made it sound like he and the conductor were old buddies.

Overall, he was very good. They played the music "all in a row," as he told HRH back home; in other words, there was no intermission, and the concert lasted just over an hour. He was a bit squirmy, climbing from his seat to my seat to the seat on my other side, or lying down across my lap with his sweater over him as a blanket, but he wasn't disruptive or distracting, and we never needed to resort to pulling out his books or colouring books. His first favourite bit was the Maple Leaf Rag (who can resist ragtime?), and he pretended to play a trombone through it, humming into his straw bottle of apple juice and moving his free hand forward and back in front of him. The guy sitting behind us thought it was hilarious. The Joplin was blown out of the water by Stravinsky's Firebird Suite, however. It may have been partially due to the fact that in the music he could hear the story that Stewart had briefly outlined for the audience before the piece began. "Mama," he whispered during the first movement, "do firebirds have fur?" "No," I said, "they have beautiful, long feathers made of flames." "Not the babies," he said authoritatively. "They have fuzz." "Oh," I said, "so they get their fire-feathers when they grow up?" "Yes," he said, quite firmly.

He crawled onto my lap at one point to snuggle, and had his head on my shoulder when the first crashing chord of the Danse Infernale began. He must have jumped six inches into the air before sitting straight up and staring at the orchestra. I had to try very hard not to giggle, and I could hear the guy behind us muffling a snicker, too. The boy sat up very straight and applauded loudly when it was over, the first piece for which he'd done so with such enthusiasm. He talked about it had been the best part of the concert and about firebirds and baby firebirds all the way out and through the parking lot, to the amusement of other patrons. It seems that my son is a budding Stravinsky fan.

He'd been so good that we picked up a doughnut on the way home.

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