Redwood Symphony: No stranger to Paradise

Like it - when the music resonates right in my chest.

Like it - when I see the performers putting on the show, and I can pick out where the individual sounds come from.

Like it - when that bit the oboe does is coming up, and I spy him picking up his instrument.

Like to - watch the concert mistress rise casually up and exert her presence over her fellow players. She’s one of the people, but she’s also a power within the group unlike the director’s baton. She decides which way the bows move in the strings, and her ear picks up things nobody else’s hears.

I got to attend the Redwood Symphony’s Halloween concert this afternoon. We’ve been on stage together, when my chorus sings with them, and it gives me a neighborly feeling to see their familiar faces. It’s not just a feeling that I’m acquainted with them, but that my voice has a connection to their instruments.

This group is always everything local, friendly music ought to be. Today they started out being Interactive. The audience got to tour the symphony, visiting with each section: winds, brass, percussion and strings. We got specifics on how an oboe is different than a clarinet (about six thousand dollars more for an oboe is one of the specifics) and how the pedals work on the harp (you can get three tones for each string). Then it was listening to lively melodies like John Williams Harry Potter music and The Polovtsian Dances. For me this is the Prince Igor or Kismet music. "Take my hand! I'm a stranger in Paradise. All lost in a wonder land, a stranger in paradise."

We finished up with more interaction. Ten kids attending the concert got an impromptu chance to direct the orchestra. The rest of us spontaneously clapped along to Souza’s “Stars and Stripes Forever”.

I don’t get any of this from itunes.

Any Bugs in the Bell?

Please CLICK ON THE PICTURE ABOVE to see all the great details

After 14 hours on a plane from Frankfurt, Wolfgang figures perhaps, there COULD be bugs in his horn bell. I played French Horn up through the end of middle school. Which made my position on the stage in Memorial Church, just behind the brass section from the Junge Kammerphilharmonie Freiburg even more enjoyable.

In my case, the drummers sat off to the right of us. Being the third french horn, lowest in the pecking order, I was the target of their happy-go-lucky juvenile male behavior. The only instruments with more time on their hands than horns are drums Though the french horns had a lot of rests to count, the drums had even more, and so they needed something to do to occupy their time, while waiting their time to play.

We practiced in the school cafeteria before school. These resourceful fellas would gather up old pieces of stale food and, when I leaned on my horn, counting, or was otherwise distracted by my best friend, the second french horn, they would toss old french fries and stale pieces of hamburger buns into my horn bell. Then when it was my turn to blow, out would come a fusillade of ancient bits of lunch.

At the age of twelve and thirteen, it didn't seem funny to me at all, but it sure does now.

Concert Details and

my other art-journal entries about this performance can be found at

* On Stage

* Playing Beethoven