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.

* The original post at Owls' Court
* Owls' Court: the main journal

A Sudden Abundance Of Live Music, And Thoughts Deriving From It

I'm tired, but there are things worthy of noting.

Invisible completely and totally rocked the house on Friday night, with a double set and a terrific cohesive sound. Every one of them keeps getting better and better. There was much dancing, and I don't normally dance. There was much singing as well, and I hope I didn't drive Jan too crazy with it. It was terrific to see people I haven't seen in forever, too. Also, I had a very good margarita. "You really seemed to be enjoying yourself," HRH said on the way home. "I think it's important to obviously demonstrate to a performer that you appreciate what they're doing," I said. "There's nothing worse than being on stage and seeing a sea of dead expressions in front of you, applause or not." Sure, I could have sat there unmoving and enjoyed myself just as much, but the music was good and it moved and what the guys were doing on stage for us moved me.

Did I miss being on stage? Yes. But not enough to throw myself back into band. I miss the times when it was going well. Unfortunately, it doesn't go well most of the time. I miss it when we're actually making music, not talking about unrelated things or wasting time. I certainly don't miss the amount of energy that went into it. Or rather, I prefer to have that energy to put into other things, like living my day to day life (thank you so very much, fibromyalgia). I'd like to get back into band someday. Someday is not soon, however. We'll all be different people somewhere down the line and that will make a positive difference as well. I'd like to explore other kinds of music in a small ensemble too, at some point, with different people.

The evening before I enjoyed my friend Marc's vocal recital, presented by all his teacher's students. (Live music two nights in a row! I don't think I'm greedy, just starved for culture.) There were about half a dozen of them and they all sang three songs, ranging from Broadway to pop to chamber songs and opera arias. It was great, and I saw a handful of the people who I would see again the next night, but in an even more relaxed atmosphere. We kibbutzed outside for an hour after the show was over, and that was just as wonderful as the recital itself, in a different way. I took a moment to look around both on Thursday and Friday night, and saw people with whom I'd stayed in touch for fifteen to twenty years as well as those I'd met within the last ten or so. I really miss my friends, and it was felt really, really good to be with them.

There's this quirk that I have: My eyes tear up suddenly when I'm really enjoying something musical. It doesn't mean I'm particularly sad or happy or overcome by what the music is communicating. It actually has more to do with appreciating the fact that the performer is offering something, similar to what I outlined above. Marc was the first one up at the recital, a position that carries a lot of responsibility, and he sang "On the Street Where You Live" from My Fair Lady. About a third of the way through the first verse I had that tearing-up response, and I thought about what was happening. I was experiencing a surge of emotion, not as a response to the music but a response to what Marc was doing: he was reaching out to his listeners and offering them something, and I was moved by it. It seems to be an empathic response. It's not in response to the words, or the music itself. It's in response to the performer. It does have an emotional connection, of course, but it's not primarily an emotional reaction.

This happens when I imagine performing myself. It doesn't happen while I'm actually performing (or it does, but extremely rarely); rather, it happens when I visualise performing certain pieces of music. I have a very strong ability to visualise, and I invest a lot of emotion into it. It's one of the ways I practise when I can't be at my instrument. I'm also very good at imagining several different lines of music simultaneously, including my own line. (I think this is one of the reasons why I love working in an orchestral setting so much, and also one of the reasons why I get frustrated very easily in small ensembles without a coach; it's hard for real performers to live up to what's happening in my head.) In these cases, my response seems to be connected to the visualisation of the joint act of the performers in the ensemble reaching out to the audience. And this too may be one of the reasons I was dissatisfied with band: I very rarely felt that reaching out-ness happening, or a sense of the audience being moved by what we were offering. There was a lot of struggle that never felt like it resolved or settled into an actual delivery of something.

I've thought about this response a lot, and I still can't quite put it into the right words. There's something about the simultaneous identification with the performer as well as being an audience too, but I can't pin it down yet. There's also something about receiving and returning energy, which I know I've talked about before in lectures and discussion and very likely at some point in this journal as well.

I don't have the opportunity to experience live music as an audience member very much, so this past week has been extremely precious to me. I'm very proud of everyone who performed, and I enjoyed myself thoroughly. I hope they all know that. And I hope that somehow I managed to communicate that I appreciated what they offered.

(Originally posted on my main journal Owls' Court.)