Thursday Ramble: A Different Perspective

A few times a year we go to the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts to watch and hear the National Symphony Orchestra.  This photo was taken as they were getting set up, the stage and audience were packed a few minutes later.  

We have developed a habit of booking "Our Seats" with that being top and center on this image, front row, close to the stage.  The view is amazing, the sound is good, we are comfortable there.  

For last Saturday night we booked different seats, a box on the side overlooking the stage. We were in the mirror of the box above the piano and harps in this image, front row, the two seats closest to the entrance stairs.  I don't recall the reason we booked different seats, it might be that we needed to reschedule and the seats we normally buy were sold, or maybe it was just the program and wanting to be closer.  But we decided to try something different.  A different perspective.  

Settling in, I was amazed at the view, the closeness to the musicians. With my cheap pocket binoculars I could read the music on the stands in front of me - 4/4 time. Then the heavy brass started tuning up, I looked over the rail to see that there was a tuba just below my right knee.  I always knew there was one, but this was different, I could look right down the bell, I could here the flutter of his lips.  The tuba player is a graying daddy bear with a buzz cut and beard, who looks like he operates a bulldozer when he is not playing with world class orchestras. 

When the pre-show announcements started, we strained to hear, we were behind and below the speakers directing that sound to the audience. Normally we are feet away from them and in front of them.  The different perspective sounded different. 

Then the orchestra started to play.  Smiling from ear to ear, I had to wipe my eyes at what my ears were hearing.  The difference in sound was amazing, it took me back to being in the center of the band in middle school (I played the tuba for a couple of years).  I could feel the sound in a way that you don't from out front and above. A slightly different perspective, and entirely different experience.  

The stage box seats were more expensive than the seats we normally buy.  Will we do it again? Probably.  Would I do it all of the time? I don't know, I think moving around and seeing and hearing from differing perspectives might help me to understand more about the experience.  

A live performance, should be as much about the experience, as the music.  I can sit here at my desk and hear all of the music I want, the recording catalogs of the world are at our fingertips, all from the same perspective.  Seeing a live perspective, I see the space, the concert hall or other venue.  I see the individual musicians, we have our favorites (Oboe Man was back last weekend.) I can hear, see, feel, and yes even smell the music.  Instruments have a smell after they have been played for a while, a smell I had not experience in decades. For brass instruments is a combination of oil and moisture, mixed by the flutter of the lips of the musicians. String instruments are wood, and varnish and age. Saturday night we were close enough to smell the music.  A perspective you seldom experience, and one no recording can reproduce.  

And such is life.  Move around and experience the familiar from different perspectives to expand your understanding. 

Well this is a big improvement.  I had a boring, kinda negative post created, one that I was unhappy with, but I must put out.  The night out, inspired me, hopefully for something better.