Symphony

Yesterday Mary Beth and I went to see the Memphis Symphony Orchestra for the start of the season (this is our first year to get season tickets). We came a little early for the talk. Then we got to see the kids from Snowden playing mallets and sometimes singing out in the lobby and they were good and fun! Then back in for the show. First was a piece called "Rainbow Body" by Christopher Theofandis, who is a contemporary composer. It's based on a chant by Hildegard of Bingen and it uses drones on the lower instruments to simulate natural reverb on the higher melodies. It was a good piece. Next was "Confluence" by Chris Brubeck (yeah, Dave's son) and this was a premier of the piece as it was commissioned for the MSO and features two guitars (classical and blues...though due to an incident a week before where the blues guitarist badly injured his hand and they weren't sure if it would heal in time for the show, they got someone as a last minute replacement but then his hand healed and hey they just both played so it ended up being three guitarists). It was thing of mixing classical and blues and funk and such. Something like that could go in a cheesy direction, but it was good. Last was "Pictures at an Exhibition" by Modest Mussorgsky. I don't think I'd known that Mussorgsky just wrote for piano and his orchestrations were done later by other composers. Anyway, it was good, probably my favorite of the three, though its last section was a little less good. But yeah, now I'm looking forward to a whole season of some more of that. Afterwards we did a quick run to Superlo for a few things. And that's about it.