xtcian

7/6/02 There's an awful lot

7/6/02

There's an awful lot of "lying on lawns" going on lately, and I, for one, am submitting my approval. This is the third night in a row I've been expected to lie back on a lawn and behave socially, and I might make it a nightly ritual.

lying in Lime Rock, CT on July 5 for fireworks

lying in Lenox, MA on July 6 for the Tanglewood music festival

jesus, we're wearing the same outfits in those pictures

We didn't know who or what was playing at Tanglewood tonight, so it was a shocking delight to show up to see Itzhak Perlman play the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, then get to hear them finish up with Respighi's Fountain and Pines of Rome. The greatest living violinist of our time, and easily two of my favorite pieces ever written. It rocked. The basketball equivalent would be like watching Michael Jordan play for a Heels alumni team.

It was especially cool because we had used so much of both the Fountains and Pines of Rome for the Pink House scratch soundtrack back in May, so Tessa recognized a lot of it. The "Pines" has an especially strong place in my heart because I felt it was the piece that best defined the intense charisma of my Dad. When he conducted it, he pulled a stunt with the trumpet and trombone sections during the "Pines of the Appian Way," by placing them in the loge and box seats for the giant groundswell effect of the Roman army approaching. On cue, he would whirl around and point at them in a tousled fury, and they would bleat forth in one of the most amazing aural experiences those yahoos at the Virginia Philharmonic would ever hear. It is one of the few great childhood memories of my dad that is unjaundiced by the vicissitudes of his character, the revelation of his transgressions, or the death of his myth.