Evendays

I received an iPod Classic for my birthday that will hold about 60 trillion of my "favorite" songs.

Any suggestions before I start loading stuff onto it? 

What about podcasts? 

Sometimes, the most beautiful things around us get ignored: Nature. People. The Creator.

You may of heard about it (it was news to me), but one of the most talented violinists of our age, Joshua Bell, played in a Washington D.C. metro station as a simple street performer. Over one thousand commuters passed by him on a Friday morning in January.

Take 10 minutes and read about what happened here.

It reminds me that I can miss seeing, and hearing, what’s beautiful. So let’s keep our eyes, and ears, open.

(Just to whet your appetite):

"’At a music hall, I’ll get upset if someone coughs or if someone’s cellphone goes off. But here, my expectations quickly diminished. I started to appreciate any acknowledgment, even a slight glance up. I was oddly grateful when someone threw in a dollar instead of change.’ This is from a man whose talents can command $1,000 a minute."

Although the stadium’s uphill and about half a mile away, Mick welcomed us to the concert with a driving “Start it up”. The music, words, slightly deformed by the Doppler effect bounced off the huge apartment building behind our place, right onto our balcony, and into the living room.

We ate raspberries and ice cream, read running magazines and surfed the web as the Stones entertained 42,600 fans between ages 7 and 77. We heard every note, every riff, every screamed lyric, every song introduction. I got it all (except for the parts in German). Madame President of the Confederation was there, along with several heads of large Swiss companies. They all rocked and rolled, extolling the virtues of the 60’s and 70’s.

All to say, with no free tickets, and no real desire to go, at the end of the evening, I was very satisfied.

Sons 1 and 2 and I sang last Friday night with the regional high school chorus. The concert took place in the St. François Church in the middle of Lausanne. A fun building from the 13th century, it stands lopsided (which you only notice from the inside) having shifted over the years because of the surrounding traffic. Acoustics are still good (if the group is good).

 

We sang a requiem composed in 1946 by the Frenchman Maurice Duruflé. A lot of work for the little time it lasts, there are still some beautiful sections. (Gregorian sounding Introit and Kyrie. The Sanctus sung by the women in four parts is heavenly.)

It was the boys’ last concert with the group. Son 1 is swamped with classes at the university and Son 2 will be off to the spiritual internship next year, so neither will continue singing “reinforcement” with the tenors.

I’ve not yet decided what to do. The group of high school teachers who sing backup are tightly knit. A hard nut to crack and hard for outsiders to find their niche. And with the boys gone, most of the motivation for singing with that group has disappeared too.