February 22, 2006 - 9:21 PM

Orchestrate!

I parked next to a Jaguar at Staples today. The license plate read: HOT WIF. And, yes, she was.

Speaking of vanity plates, someone stumbled onto my site by searching google for the terms "OMG" "WTF" and "license plates". Ha ha. Geeks of the world, pwn!

In the OMG (but not WTF) category- I went to a concert at the Walt Disney Music Hall in downtown L.A. on Sunday. It's only a few years old, but considered one of the premiere acoustic spaces in the world. I was not let down.

LDBL had invited me to the performance, a night of music from the Santa Monica High School Orchestra, where he teaches. This was a full orchestra, with 9 stands of 1st violins, 9 stands of 2nd violins, 6 stands of cellos, and 7 stands of violas. 14 VIOLA PLAYERS! That's unheard of for a youth orchestra. Usually it's 2 or 3 viola players and a few violin players you have to convert into violists, but not here. Then they had the full kit and kaboodle of wind and horn players and 4 percussionists AND a harpist. All from one high school. Granted, the school is bigger than both of the colleges I went to - where Amherst had only 1600 students, and Berklee barely topped 3000, Santa Monica High has over 3600. But come on, it's a standard public school. You usually have to go to a city or state orchestra to get this number of kids who are THIS good and are playing such quality material, or else you're dealing with a special arts magnet school.

How good were they? Well, I played in an orchestra at Peabody when I was in high school, and we tackled symphonies and overtures by Beethoven, Dvorak, Sibelius, Mozart. We were pretty darned good for high school kids. We even got to travel to Germany, Holland, and Belgium in youth orchestra exchanges. SaMoHi would have given us a run for our money. But here's the thing: the Peabody Prep pulled in students from Maryland, Virginia, and Pennsylvania (and maybe Delaware...I don't know, that state is so small, I think they get by with just sharing 2 violins and 1 cello for all the people who aren't named DuPont)- we were a multi-state music institution. SaMoHi is getting it done with one student body.

Our seats were behind the orchestra, so we got a unique perspective of the performance, but amazingly, the sound wasn't any less jaw-dropping back there than it would have been anywhere else in the auditorium. Sure, we had a little more percussion in our ears than I'm used to, but you could still hear the nuances and blendings of all the sections pristinely. I have a new appreciation for Gershwin's "An American In Paris" after watching them blaze through it. I can only imagine what a joy it must be to play.

One of the best parts of the night was watching the percussionists from back there. Being a cellist, I was always out front near the audience, so I could never see what was happening towards the rear of the orchestra. Have you ever seen a percussion corps in action? One guy is on the timpani/kettle drums, and three others rotate around the rest, switching up between the bass drum, snare and tom drums, marimba and xylophones, triangle, cymbals, and other assorted hand percussion. There were a lot of space and rests for them, but as soon as their parts kicked in, they were energetic and focused and even a little manic. I've never seen someone playing the cymbals with such intensity.

During the last movement of the last piece, I saw that there was a little commotion going on between two of the percussionists. Incredibly, the guy playing the cymbals had managed to invert one of the pair. Instead of having the usual wok-domed shape, the inside collapsed and the brim turned up so that it looked like a sombrero. He and the other percussionist were at first amused by this turn of events, then alarmed when they realized he had to bang the cymbals together again. They attempted to bend the cymbal back into shape, even taking a knee to the metal disc, but to no avail. Finally, during a lull in their part, the one with the cymbals walked briskly off stage and returned half a minute later with a brand new pair of untarnished cymbals, just in the nick of time.

It was a highly amusing episode that both LDBL and I had a good chuckle at, one that helped show that these talented musicians were still teenagers.

Now Listening To : A really cheesy mix that Ros made. Spandau Ballet, "Endless Love" cheesy.
Random Thought : I watched Terminator 3 and The Island last week, both very exciting and very boring at the same time.

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