Sunday, October 14, 2012
Arts & Leisure
Last night I went to see Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble at Symphony Center. This was not something I'd planned on doing before yesterday morning, when my friend called and said he had an extra ticket that could be mine free of charge. I was a little skeptical, honestly, because I took world musics in college, and got little more out of it than a wide variety of tension headaches and an A-. But as a general matter, I do not turn down free tickets, whether they be for a Taylor Swift concert or an Auto-da-fe (but I repeat myself). So despite my natural inclination to put on sweatpants and watch Halloween-themed Lifetime movies on a Saturday night, I had an extra Diet Coke with dinner and subjected myself to the sights and smells of the Red Line.
And I was glad I did! The group was really amazing and full of awesomely-named instruments like the Kamancheh and the Shakuhachi. There was this fantastic lady with green-tipped hair who could wail on a Gaita like nobody's business. (And it is nobody's business, really.) And they played lots of recent compositions with really interesting tonality and complex rhythms, which kind of made me want to take of my pants in the middle of Orchestra Hall. My only quibble was that they turned the lights off in the second half so they could show some (admittedly amazing) projections, which played a little to heavily into my narcoleptic tendencies. Luckily I mastered the use of self-abuse to maintain consciousness in first period biology way back in the ninth grade.
Last night I went to see Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble at Symphony Center. This was not something I'd planned on doing before yesterday morning, when my friend called and said he had an extra ticket that could be mine free of charge. I was a little skeptical, honestly, because I took world musics in college, and got little more out of it than a wide variety of tension headaches and an A-. But as a general matter, I do not turn down free tickets, whether they be for a Taylor Swift concert or an Auto-da-fe (but I repeat myself). So despite my natural inclination to put on sweatpants and watch Halloween-themed Lifetime movies on a Saturday night, I had an extra Diet Coke with dinner and subjected myself to the sights and smells of the Red Line.
And I was glad I did! The group was really amazing and full of awesomely-named instruments like the Kamancheh and the Shakuhachi. There was this fantastic lady with green-tipped hair who could wail on a Gaita like nobody's business. (And it is nobody's business, really.) And they played lots of recent compositions with really interesting tonality and complex rhythms, which kind of made me want to take of my pants in the middle of Orchestra Hall. My only quibble was that they turned the lights off in the second half so they could show some (admittedly amazing) projections, which played a little to heavily into my narcoleptic tendencies. Luckily I mastered the use of self-abuse to maintain consciousness in first period biology way back in the ninth grade.
