Music

very kindly offered , , and me free tickets to last night’s Seattle Symphony and Chorale performance at Benaroya, and we were delighted to take her up on that. We hadn’t hung out with Kathryn and for a while in general, for one thing. For another, we agreed to meet for dinner at Wild Ginger downtown, right across the street from Benaroya.

And oh my word. I hadn’t eaten there before, but it was a delight all around. Our waiter was amazing, and they was another gentleman who was very eager to offer us wine suggestions even though we didn’t actually wind up buying any wine. So thumbs up for the staff, all around. As for the food: WOW. A bit on the pricy side, but worth every penny. Dara and I shared this tasty seven flavor beef dish, and it was so much a pleasure to be served a portion size that was exactly the right amount of food for the two of us to eat. The chocolate torte we both had for dessert was, in a word, orgasmic. Calorie-laden? Oh god yes. But I REGRET NOTHING, even though I made myself get on the treadmill this morning to earn that orgasmic dessert. *^_^*;;

Over such a delightful dinner, we had lovely conversation about the music we were about to see as well as our various thoughts on who ought to be in the cast for The Hobbit, previous experiences with high school reunions, Lillian giving herself her first haircut, and other fun topics. A wonderful experience all around and a splendid lead-in to the main event of the evening.

The orchestra first performed Brahms’ Concerto for Violin and Cello in A minor, Op. 102, Double. I wasn’t familiar with this work, but my Aubrey-Maturin fandom naturally inclines me to be fond of anything involving violin and cello together, so hey! The soloists did do perfectly lovely work, and once or twice the violin hit this high sweet sustained note that made me grin. On the whole though it wasn’t as musically interesting to me as I’d have hoped, and this may be because we weren’t in the best seats on the floor to get the richest sound experience. Overall the piece seemed a little distant and removed to me. I think I’d like to hear it again on a home stereo or perhaps through decent headphones, just to get a more personal idea of its flavor.

After that the chorale came out on stage to join the orchestra for the feature performance: Ravel’s Daphnis et Chloé, with which I had not been previously familiar. But Q gave us an overall summary of the story, since it was originally written as the score for a ballet, and between that and the program notes I got a decent idea of where in the story the various parts of the piece were. I was quite impressed by this overall–in no small part because of the variety of instrumentation. There were multiple flavors of clarinet involved, and, which was very near and dear to my heart, an alto flute solo! And there was even a wind machine at certain key moments, emphasizing where the god Pan was supposed to appear.

Dara told us all afterwards that she had an experience with it much like I had when I finally saw Casablanca: i.e., that after seeing all of the movies and TV shows and books and such that were riffing off stuff in that classic film, it was very odd to actually go back and see the original work. Same deal with this performance, since it was full of a lot of motifs and styles that heavily influenced quite a bit of Disney and Hollywood scores that came after. She particularly recognized bits that showed up in the soundtracks for Buckaroo Banzai and Tron.

I’m thinking I may want a recording of this, so I’m going to have to hunt through iTunes to find a good one.

Thanks, , for a lovely musical evening!

came to the realization this weekend that she really needed a decent bodhran to finish up her CD, given that her little Kimi, which is essentially a toy, just wasn’t cutting it. So since we’re recovering well financially, we scampered down to Dusty Strings yesterday to get her a real drum!

They didn’t have the drum she really wanted–mostly because those, Dusty String’s highest end bodhrans–are made by an artisan in Ireland who makes new drums quite slowly and there was no real estimate on when he might get more to them. But happily they had a couple of drums that were kind of the next tier down, and Dara ultimately chose one of those. The new drum’s got a nice deep resonant voice to it and should sound awesome recorded. Its only drawback is that Dara can’t do that nifty rip noise around the rim, but it ain’t like she’s tossing Kimi, so she can still break out the little drum for that.

Meanwhile, because this is pretty much mandated any time I set foot in that place, I checked out their wall of acoustic guitars. They had a few Seagulls as well as two smaller guitars that said Art & Lutherie on the heads–and the Dusty Strings staff said that those were actually made by the same parent company, which was kind of neat. The A&L guitars I liked were these guys, and the one I particularly liked was about the size of Rags but with a bit more punch. Ultimately though Dara and I agreed that that instrument didn’t really have the capability to roar, so I started playing with the Seagulls, and the third one I tried had a really lovely voice to it, a good deep low end and some clear, precise upper notes as well.

I have to admit that a good Seagull is very likely a contender for the Cargo for the guitar I’ll ultimately buy. I have more than a little fear that the Cargo is possibly way more guitar than I actually need, since I have no aspirations to be a real performer; I just want a nice guitar I can play at jams and take to local conventions for filking purposes, and occasional busking as well. The Seagull very well may be about right.

On the other hand, Dara pointed out quite correctly that it’s very possible that I could grow enough as a guitarist to match the Cargo. The Seagull would certainly give me good room to grow–but I shouldn’t necessarily dismiss the possibility of growing to match the Cargo, either. What I would really like to do is go to the Bellevue store that carries the Cargos, see if they have Seagulls as well, and then just compare both instruments side by side and see which one calls to me louder.

Of course, this depends upon me selling enough copies of Faerie Blood to actually afford the Cargo. *^_^*;;

In the meantime, in the interests of giving me more room to grow as a guitarist, I snagged a copy of the same fakebook I’d bought for mandolin, only this is the guitar version. So I’ll see if I can start picking out some of these melodies on Rags, which will give me some fingerwork practice. Looking forward to that!

Last but not least, I snagged a couple of CDs from the store since they do have a small selection–and I was stunned, stunned I tell you, to see that they actually had a couple of La Bottine Souriante CDs! So I promptly grabbed one of those, as well as one by an Irish lady named Muireann Nic Amhlaoibh who appears on a previous CD I bought. Also, the name Muireann Nic Amhlaoibh is just awesome.

All in all a lovely way to spend Valentine’s Day afternoon, and Dara and I were the last ones out of the store since we were there right up until they closed. Always a pleasure to visit there! Because as far as I’m concerned, music is love.