avant garde

so on Saturday I went to see the performance at the Historic Asolo Theater of ETHEL called "Documerica".

First- here is the theater as I was awaiting the start of this unusual performance by the string quartet ETHEL...

the view from the stage (remaining photos taken from the program for the performance)

and here is some information about the performance-

cover of the Series program guide- with Julian Sands in upper left and ETHEL in the lower right-
(for the review of the Julian Sands show see http://semifreelife.blogspot.com/2015/02/just-plain-brilliant.html )

so I won't spend a ton of time on the review- it is mixed- several of the pieces were fabulous and a couple were grating to my ears. the younger members of the audience were very enthusiastic in their response to the show. And - there were younger audience members - which is sometimes not the case in this area of wealthy seniors...LOL Phil told me that the median income and age for Long Boat Key (where we do not live) is 290K and 68 and 99% white (so now you know why we don't live there- LOL) but this is a common demographic of the theater goers in the area ... (source for the data is Wikipedia)

so - while I really enjoyed the photographic part of Documerica (in some respects a tour of my youth) I was less enamoured by the music- great concept though to combine visuals with the sounds--- overall, glad I went also glad Phil did not- so not his style... and then we were up the next day for the big reunion! (stay tuned)

a virtuoso performance!!!!

by Joshua Bell tonight at the Van Wezel Performing Arts Center...

first we tried a new dinner place before the show- Yummy House (bad name - best Chinese food we have had in Florida) where we had excellent salt and pepper oysters and beef chow fun and shrimp & scallops in XO sauce... it is Hong Kong style Chinese-

then we headed over to Van Wezel and heard a magnificent performance by the entire Academy (both with full orchestra and with strings only) but the star attraction - and rightly so, was Joshua Bell! what a virtuoso- a performance that left us in awe of such talent...

here is what was on the program tonight- the Bach (performed by the strings) - was excellent; the Beethoven (by the whole orchestra) was fabulous; the Saint-Saens (the whole orchestra again) was the performance of the evening in my opinion- truly inspired and inspiring!; and the final piece was Schubert, which suffered by the comparison to the others... perhaps it was the arrangement (Mahler) but it seemed to lose focus along the way --- and was a bit of a disappointment in an otherwise flawless program.

Joshua Bell was on the front of the annual Van Wezel program (with a number of other top drawing performers) and richly deserved to be so featured... wonderful performance-

here is a bit more detail about the ASMF and Bell-

a superb performance and fabulous concert overall!  (tomorrow - back to Morocco- as we head into the Sahara!)