Saturday, July 06, 2019

Amazed At Where I Have Come


Let's face it, I was born a country bumpkin, with solid working class roots.  My grandmother had a collection of records of classical music, no one in my family quite understood what the two of us heard in it.  It enthralled me, as a child I dreamed of someday hearing live classical music - of conducting.  There was a problem with conducting and that is printed music is a bunch of random dots on graph paper in my weird brain.  Oh well.  

When given the chance I escaped the farm. Enjoying classical music on public radio, but not seizing the opportunity to watch it live, until this year.  

In January we went to the Kennedy Center, the son of a friend of ours had a Opera premiere at the Kennedy Center.  A few weeks later we went back to hear the National Symphony Orchestra, then a Russian Folk Group, and then the NSO again.  We have tickets for a harpsichord program in a few months. So here I am, stage right, 2nd balcony all the way to the front, literally over the end of the stage.  It was amazing. A very, very long way from the farm.  

Someone asked me recently about live concerts, thinking popular music.  There is only one of those in my history, Kiss in the Jacksonville Coliseum in 1976, if it going to be once in a lifetime make it worthwhile.  And more recently an all Mozart program by the NSO. 

What was the last live music show you saw? 

3 comments:

  1. Haven’t been to a large concert for a while. Brilliant flamenco singer and backup musicians in Malaga a few years ago. I’m not one to sit and WATCH a performance of classical music, although I do love to listen. Was just at a danc performance last night. A little bit of this, a little bit of that.

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  2. 4-5 years ago, the bacon brothers (kevin [rawr] and michael) at the keswick theater in glenside pa. homecoming for those boys, since their father edmund was a philly city planner 50 years ago.

    I would LOVE to see itzhak perlman and yo yo ma play live.

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  3. The last live concert I attended was a performance by the Alberta Baroque Ensemble. You know, in the late 70s, I had to chaperone my teenybopper sister at a couple of big concerts -- one was KISS and another was the Bay City Rollers, if I remember correctly. Those were probably the last arena rock type of things I attended. Not my cup of tea.

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