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I've been elevated to a musical level I've never been to before. Last night Stephan and I saw Ravi Shankar and his daughter Anoushka (and their ensemble). I called everyone, but by the time anyone responded the tickets were sold out. It was utterly amazing. I have a Westerner's guilt for not knowing more about music besides my own, but it was much less alien than I expected. Their music sort of concentrates on rhythm and melody to the exclusion of any harmonic complexities. I think bah to Schoenberg; no one has yet exhausted the expressive possibilities of tonal music, especially until they've written crossmusicalcultural pieces that combine the Western harmonic complexity with Indian melodic and rhythmic complexity.
Stephan felt sick in the middle of the last song (it was probably the chili I fed him before we left), so he missed it, and it was the least Indian-classical and most audibly Western-influenced one. The sitars were running around in thirds. It was so cool. Next time there us ab opportunity, I am taking Indian music classes (especially tabla).
On the train home, Stephan kept feeling worse. So I talked to distract him, and gave him water once we got to my house, and then we went to his and added to the distraction by watching 20 Hours in America (fourth season West Wing premiere). Poor boy had an emotionally wringing day. He was sobbing by the end of that two-hour episode. He needed to go to bed. I was too beat to walk home by then, and I didn't want to make mama come get me at 2 in the morning, so I crashed on his couch.
At 8:40 or so I got up and walked to the train station. It seems too convenient to be possible that there is a train station two blocks from his house that goes to a train station five blocks from my house. However, there is. So I went home and took a shower, slightly too late to walk to Shepherd for the Hansel and Gretel readthrough. So mama took me.
I must admit, it's going to be much cooler than I thought. We're going much closer to the Grimm fairytale than the children's opera. For one thing, we'll probably have no children in the audience, so we're free to go as Grand Guignol as we want and creep everybody out with freaky dark macabre German fairytaleness. Hansel and Gretel are actually starving to death, so they don't look too great, and their parents are a drunk and a child abuser. The witch (which in the opera is conveniently cast as a man) has overtones of paedophilia. There are nonsinging demons for the angels to save the children from. The gingerbread kids are kind of zombielike, and we all eat the witch at the end instead of dancing about in a circle.
There's another rehearsal at 4, an actual music chorus rehearsal, so I'll wait to do my German till after that.
Meanwhile, guess what came? The new Westen Wind album with L'Homme Arme on it! It has all the Bob Dennis music on it, and it's called Man in the Moon, and it is extremely cool. So I am doing that now instead of German.
Stephan felt sick in the middle of the last song (it was probably the chili I fed him before we left), so he missed it, and it was the least Indian-classical and most audibly Western-influenced one. The sitars were running around in thirds. It was so cool. Next time there us ab opportunity, I am taking Indian music classes (especially tabla).
On the train home, Stephan kept feeling worse. So I talked to distract him, and gave him water once we got to my house, and then we went to his and added to the distraction by watching 20 Hours in America (fourth season West Wing premiere). Poor boy had an emotionally wringing day. He was sobbing by the end of that two-hour episode. He needed to go to bed. I was too beat to walk home by then, and I didn't want to make mama come get me at 2 in the morning, so I crashed on his couch.
At 8:40 or so I got up and walked to the train station. It seems too convenient to be possible that there is a train station two blocks from his house that goes to a train station five blocks from my house. However, there is. So I went home and took a shower, slightly too late to walk to Shepherd for the Hansel and Gretel readthrough. So mama took me.
I must admit, it's going to be much cooler than I thought. We're going much closer to the Grimm fairytale than the children's opera. For one thing, we'll probably have no children in the audience, so we're free to go as Grand Guignol as we want and creep everybody out with freaky dark macabre German fairytaleness. Hansel and Gretel are actually starving to death, so they don't look too great, and their parents are a drunk and a child abuser. The witch (which in the opera is conveniently cast as a man) has overtones of paedophilia. There are nonsinging demons for the angels to save the children from. The gingerbread kids are kind of zombielike, and we all eat the witch at the end instead of dancing about in a circle.
There's another rehearsal at 4, an actual music chorus rehearsal, so I'll wait to do my German till after that.
Meanwhile, guess what came? The new Westen Wind album with L'Homme Arme on it! It has all the Bob Dennis music on it, and it's called Man in the Moon, and it is extremely cool. So I am doing that now instead of German.