There's An Hour I'll Never Get Back

The wife and I have season tickets for the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra (BSO). In the past, the music director was Yuri Temirkanov, a Russian who was big into the classics (Bach, Beethoven, Chopin, Mozart, etc). Then, a few years ago, the BSO selected Marin Alsop to become the first female music director of a major national symphony. All well and good. Except that Alsop is big on, er, um, contemporary music. Frankly, based on what I've heard, "contemporary crap" is a redundancy. Let me put it another way. How do you tell if what you're about to hear is equivalent to cat's mating in a back alley? Look for the word "dissonance" in the program. That is the catch word. Last week, we went to a show in which the program spoke of "ascending skyward" or some such. The name of one of the piece's was "UFO", written by a contemporary composer by the name of Michael Daugherty. It was written as a one-person percussion piece and was to be played by Evelyn Glennie, oh, excuse me, Dame Evelyn Glennie. According to her website, she's a "Musician, Motivational Speaker, Composer, Educationalist, Jewellery designer."

Danger! Danger!

The first part of the concert was a piece by Wagner. Actually, quite good. Then Evelyn made her appearance. She was dressed just like every feminist professor from back in my days at Purdue. Sun dress, long gray hair, the works. And she was playing something that appeared to be a discone antenna. It was supposed to be "other worldly", I'm guessing. I just wished it had stayed in that other world. She ratcheted up to playing a marimba and xylophone, along with (I'm not making this up...) a 55 gallon drum. There were also many "instruments" that I, even though I have a background as a drummer, did not recognize. The worst part? When she used a violin bow and ran it across the edge of a cymbal. Imagine a hundred kids running their fingernails over a chalkboard. THAT'S what that sounded like. I literally cringed and began curling up into the fetal position. I was almost to the point of sobbing, muttering "Please, mommy, make it stop!" when my prayers were answered. It was over.

Of course, many people in the audience were on their feet, clapping and howling. I was clapping simply because it was over.

I imagine some will consider me uncultured. And I would call you a sycophant. It was a cacophony not of sound, but noise. If you want to hear percussion that is truly a pleasant sound (loud though it is at times), I highly recommend the show "Stomp". I had the opportunity to see that several years ago. I remember going into the show and being seated near a lot of kids. I remember thinking, "Oh, this does not bode well." The wife and I had recently attended a show of the Beijing acrobats. We were near a group of kids who made the show a nightmare. We actually left early. But this time was different. When the first person of the "Stomp" cast made his appearance on stage, the kids quieted down. And they never had a chance to get bored. The show just kept them, and me, in awe. THAT was a truly worthwhile show. THAT was percussion. Evelyn's show, by contrast, was the equivalent of a talented child banging pots and pans in the kitchen.

The UFO (which stands for "Unendingly Frickin Odious") finally took back off. Good riddance.