ateolf | The Rite of Spring

I got a little 3" cd in the mail: Slow Blink x Fflesh: s/t. Later I also got some scrap metal orchestra supplies delivered. After work Mary Beth and I took a kinda shortish but almost full-length walk around the neighborhood. Then I finished reading James by Percival Everett and it was good. If I knew at some point then I'd forgotten that it's something of a retelling of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn from Jim's perspective. At night we went downtown to the Halloran to see Memphis Symphony Orchestra do The Rite of Spring!! It's one of those "unplugged" things so the first half was a lecture with some demonstration of parts of it (it was cool when they'd show the layers of contrasting rhythms, one section would play one part then the other would play their part separately that would go along with it and so on and then finally play them all stacked together). And after the intermission they played the whole thing. It was pretty great to finally see it live! Easily one of my favorite orchestral works (if not an easy absolute favorite)! Though since the Halloran has a smaller stage it was a more scaled-down version (close to half the size of its full orchestration but with a piano added to make up for some of it). "What a riot!" was the subtitle of the event, but then in the lecture he didn't talk about the riot at all. Well, they staged little bit of a mini-riot in the middle of the piece between its two parts. They had a plant in the audience! (He was actually sitting almost right behind us.) He started booing loudly as soon as the pause came in. At first on hearing the boo I thought it was just someone being cheeky playing along to reference the riot. Then he kept going on yelling "I'm sorry but this music sounds like crap!" etc. and the woman who was with him started telling him to stop it. Bob (the conductor) stopped, looked out and walked to the side of the stage where a stage manager came out. Then Bob explained that it was their little gag to reference the riot of the original premier. And the piece continued on. Alright, fun times! Anyway, more Igor Stravinsky live!