Well, I'm back from Nashville! We got a bit of a late start, Mike and I. I got there 20 minutes later than my original ETA, but then he had to mess with this Phone Tree thing and get it set up before we left, so it was really closer to 1:30 when we left the church. When we got out to the cars he realized he had left his symphony going clothes at his house - 25 minutes away and out of the way. So we got those and got on the road, 2:15.

Somewhere outside of Birmingham we recieved a call from becca and Mike (4:30) informing us that they were in Nashville at 5:30 as we had asked, having forgotten that Nashville is on CST and not EST. I had reminded them both of this, though not in the context for arival, so they didn't notice I guess. We told them we'd be another three hours.

We got to the hotel about 7:10 and changed quickly, after a slight sock fiasco which can be read about in the Springstead's blog. (There's a link in a post down there somewhere, about searching for my name on google.) We got to the location and found close, cheap parking quickly and got inside. We then found out that our row C tickets (which I actually thought we had gotten F) were not third row but front row looking at the players' feet!! Well, we couldn't see much besides the chamber orchestra that plays with the baritone and tenor, the mentioned baritone and tenor (DON FRAZURE!!), the conductor, and the children's choir, but we could hear everything very clearly and it was very well balanced, surprisingly for being so close.

The music was wonderful... I knew it would be but... Man... It's like a million times better than any recording, even when it's a recording with Fischer-Dieskau. The tenor was, of course, absolutly wonderful as he always is. The bass was pretty good too, though he looked like death (quite fitting as the role of the bass and tenor and chamber orchestra in this work is that of the victems of the war) with his head and eyebrows shaved and a scar on one side of his head, sunken in eyes and large lips... His headshot looked just like that so I assume the shaven neo-nazi look is his normal look... His bio said he does a lot of musical theatre and it was aparent in his vocal style and his expression. He would make a very, very effective villian.

The organ was played on a Korg. Sounded like an organ but was a bit quiet, we heard it fine, not sure how the back of the room heard it.

I first heard this work durring my freshman year, I was poking around in the listening lab at school and found a recording of it (the fischer-dieskau one) and it looked interesting so I put it on. I was much impressed and soon bought the CDs, even though they were $40 at the time. It was worth it. For some reason I never thought I'd have a chance to see it live. But I did. Oh man, did I ever.

Well, after the concert was over we went in search of food for springstead and myself, as we hadn't had time to get dinner. We looked all downtown but either there was a lot of covercharge and scantly clad women, or there was no parking, or it was closed. We ended up eating at a Burger King. In the drive through we were greated by about a dozen or so small furry rodents. Ok, not so small. Yay for rats! They were running across the street to Capt'n D's so I assume that every night about 10 they start getting into the trash of the various resteraunts there.

That night we sat up while mike and mike played guitars. Ok, becca laid down and drifted in and out of consciousness I believe, but the rest of us were sitting up. 4am we went to bed.

The next morning after some showers and food we sat around playing penny whistles, harmonicas, and mouth harp. All in various keys, at the same time, and randomly since the Springstead is the only one with a little bit of practice on these things. The maid knocked and asked when we were checking out so she could clean the room, we interpret this to mean, "Please to go away, you are loud." So we packed up and left (it was close to checkout time anyway). We sought food and found an Arbys and were about to go there when Springstead spotted, next door, a little mexican resteraunt and sugested that we try it. He was much impressed with the Mexican-ness of the place and we were all impressed by the food. Mmm good food.

Now I am in butler (I refuse to call it home most of the time). I had planned on moving to Augusta tomorrow, but it will not happen I have too much to do. It will happen Tuesday, or perhaps Wednesday. It has to happen by then because Thursday I go to see the opera!

I'm so excited about moving to Augusta, I can't wait. There is a church there that I have visited a couple of times and love (First Pres, Augusta) and there are always all kinds of concerts, free and otherwise, and my grandmother likes to go to them so I will probably accompany her often. There will be projects to occupy my time: Searching for a job, e-bay selling, putting my photos in albums (and scanning them so if I ever DO get my webspace back I can put up stuff), and running speakers for my grandmother. Those are a few, I am sure I will come up with others. Not to mention the friends becca has already made that I will get to hang out with (always nice to send a scout ahead of you to make friends and find things, so when you get there you can just plug right in as if you always belonged!).

So, yeah, i'm much less depressed about life at this moment in time. But man, I have so much to do, gotta figure out what to take!!!
- posted by Nick @ 1/25/2004 03:47:00 PM | 0 comments