Flogging the Wrong Horse

It has been an interesting couple of weeks on the orchestral front.  New ED in Colorado, pissing match between a top soloist and a top conductor.  Oh, and an orchestra that has lost it’s mind.  Same as it ever was.

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Dick Cheney LIVES!!!

OK, we all know that George Bush was not the architect of the Bush Doctrine, right?  That honor, if you want to call it that, goes to Vader-in-Chief Dick Cheney.  He pulled the strings and the Bush administration danced.  It was the height of the Neo-Con movement in America.  But not in music.

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WWJD?

It was near the end of the first set, one of three scheduled for that night, when it happened.  The band launched into their next chart and we heard the unmistakable strains of Stravinsky’s Firebird,  several audience members around me shouted “YES!!!,” and my wife broke into a broad grin.  I looked on stage at the laptop with the Apple logo and then I thought – “What Would Jobs Do?”

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I Got Grand Rapids!

Every professional musician has had “that” happen to them.  You somehow find yourself in a random conversation with a stranger and the subject of profession comes up.  You sheepishly let slip that you are a musician……… a professional musician………….. a professional classical musician……. and you get “The Look.”

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Perpetual (E)Motion

I took my eldest to a batting clinic recently.  He’s an aspiring Little Leaguer with a live arm and a fantastic sense of the game.  The coach was trying to get him to make this particular adjustment, which for some strange reason he was having trouble with, and I yelled “it’s just like practicing your violin!”  That got me some strange looks.

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