Canberra Symphony Orchestra is having a very nice year

Well done CSO – I guess if you’re not going to say it about yourselves, then nobody will, eh?

I’m starting to love Symphony Orchestra concerts or any type of show with Orchestras. The technical brillance of professional musicians playing classical intstruments is awesome to watch.

Particularly now that I’m starting to enjoy playing classical music on my flute (it’s more fun than contempary music to play it’s simple but complex and sounds fantastic even if you don’t play it well)

Later this year my sister, who is the Scottish BBC Orchestra assistant conductor, and Sydney Symphony Orchestra assistant conductor, is conducting at the Albert hall, I believe.

She’s been described as, if not the best female conductor in the world, then at least the second best. She’s a musical genius, world class.

I’ll post details closer to the event.

http://jessicacottis.com/

It’s at Llewellyn Hall, and it’s Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony and other works on May 22nd. You can already get tickets through Ticketek.

With the Sydney Symphony Orchestra. I ripped out an ad last weekend.

Later this year my sister, who is the Scottish BBC Orchestra assistant conductor, and Sydney Symphony Orchestra assistant conductor, is conducting at the Albert hall, I believe.

She’s been described as, if not the best female conductor in the world, then at least the second best. She’s a musical genius, world class.

I’ll post details closer to the event.

http://jessicacottis.com/

Talented mob, that Thumper family. I’ll keep an eye out for the concert!

poetix said :

I love concerts except for:

1. People who wait until the music starts and then spend the entire concert reading their programme, flicking through it noisily as if the composition has an extra part written for glossy paper.

2. Individuals who go with terrible, obviously long-term coughs and always unload during quiet movements.

3. Those who unwrap lollies noisily, taking about five minutes for each one, after considerable handbag excavations.

.. … …

I, on the other hand, am sometimes amused when an audience is required to sit in quiet reverence throughout a piece of music that in its day was composed to be played as background music during noisy social events … Mozart would, I am sure, be in stitches on seeing a still and po-faced Canberra audience concentrating on a light piece that was, in his time, always competing with people milling around and flirting, loud voices, and the clinking of glasses …

I love concerts except for:

1. People who wait until the music starts and then spend the entire concert reading their programme, flicking through it noisily as if the composition has an extra part written for glossy paper.

2. Individuals who go with terrible, obviously long-term coughs and always unload during quiet movements.

3. Those who unwrap lollies noisily, taking about five minutes for each one, after considerable handbag excavations.

4. Parents and grandparents (and I am not referring to #1 here) who repeatedly drag children along who really don’t want to be there and who therefore climb over chairs in desperate attempts to escape. Then Mummy or Daddy or whoever must say ‘shoosh’ or threaten them in some horrible way. I have seen children in tears, which must make them love classical music for life.

The people who do the things above are those who go totally mental at slightly late arrivals and anyone who shows real enjoyment and dares to clap at the ‘wrong time’, thus ensuring that things stay nice and quiet for the unwrapping of lollies, coughing, program fiddling, unhappy kiddies’ escape attempts and tut-tutting at, say, Philip Glass, or basically anyone but Mozart.

On the other hand, CSO and certain other concerts make me feel young, as compared to the majority of the audience, I am a total teenager. It balances out You Are Here very nicely.

We took our three boys to the first Llewelyn concert last week. The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, a Saint-Saens violin concerto, a work for Canberra’s centenary by Vincent Plush and Ravel’s Bolero. Something old, something new.

The CSO were magnificent. There is something amazing about 40-odd musicians playing magnificent music. Strings, woodwind, brass, huge percussion, and a harp to top it off.

Our boys complained before we arrived, and brought books to read as protest. The books never got opened, they were suitably gobsmacked by the performance.

Even if you are not into classical music, it’s an experience worth doing at least once in your life.