Our Night at the Symphony

Well, I'm home. I just finished driving 461 miles in 6 hours and 45 minutes and I'm a little tuckered, but I thought I'd update you on our activities at the symphony last night. My daughter is a classical music fan, and a night at the symphony together is our idea of fun. There were some interesting moments that are worth recounting.

I tried to get a photo of the Golden Gate Bridge as we made our third of four crossings on Saturday, and this is the best I could get.

I wish I could have gotten a picture of the city as we crossed the bridge. The lighting was magnificent and the city just glowed. It's too bad so many wackos live there.

As we expected, traffic around the Symphony Hall was completely blotto thanks to the LoveFest that was going on just across the street. The streets were filled with pedestrians in all kinds of crazy hippie wear, and we finally found an open parking meter several blocks from the concert hall. I had exactly four quarters and each quarter only bought six minutes of parking time. Given the traffic problems going on down there I just said the heck with it and figured if they want to give me a ticket, so be it. I wasn't going anywhere else.

We had to wend our way through the assembled hippies, aging and wannabe, to get to the concert. I'm sure both us and the LoveFest goers were looking at each other and thinking how weird the other guy was dressed.

Once we finally made it past the hippie throng and got into the concert hall, I found a great view of San Francisco City Hall as the sun went down right across the street from where we were. Given the beauty of the building and the lighting, it's hard to believe that thousands of really strange people were hanging out just on the other side of that scene.

I asked one of the bartenders to snap a photo of my daughter and I in our symphony garb before the start of the concert. Although there were lot of concert goers on the sidewalks around the hall, where we parked we pretty much stood out in the crowd. We were the only ones for blocks who weren't wearing something tie-dyed.


Shortly after this photo was taken I noticed a very tall, elegant woman coming up the stairs from the main entrance. She was wearing an expensive looking ensemble including a cocktail length black dress covered by a long black evening coat, very fashionable high heeled leather boots upon which she moved quite easily. Then I looked at her face which was covered in pretty heavy pancake makeup and noticed something a little out of the ordinary...she had an Adam's apple bigger than mine. The tall elegant woman was a guy in drag. Welcome to San Francisco! I guess the makeup was helping to cover up his five o'clock shadow. That's one confused dude.

We sat in the side terrace seats in the concert hall which are located right above and alongside the orchestra. I snapped a quick shot before the concert (they don't allow cameras in there during the show). I could lean forward a few inches and look right down on the heads of the low brass section. If I'd had a Junior Mint, I could have dropped it right in the tuba (Seinfeld fans will get that reference).

These were really great seats as far as I'm concerned. Instead of spending the evening looking at the conductor's back, we were able to watch his facial expressions throughout the evening as he conducted a Mozart symphony and a lengthy Mahler piece during the second half. Michael Tilson Thomas is the conductor of the San Francisco Symphony and is an engaging guy to watch. He also has a bit of a sense of humor.

He chose to conduct the entire Mozart three-movement Symphony in C Major without a conductor's score. He walked out, took his position on the podium, and then peeked over the concertmaster's music stand to glance at the piece as though he wasn't sure what they were going to be playing. It was kind of funny, but then he proceeded to conduct the entire 35 minute piece without ever referring to the music. He really knew that work well.

The second half consisted of a Mahler piece which was six Chinese poems that had been translated into German and put to music. They featured a tenor and baritone, both of whom sang in German, so that was a little hard to follow and if there was one drawback about our seats it was that the vocalists were a little harder to hear. The tenor used music for his three songs, but the baritone had all three of his memorized, and his songs were quite long and involved. Pretty impressive. The whole thing was recorded for a new CD scheduled to come out next year.

I'm not much of a Mahler fan (a little too slow for me), but the whole performance was very well done. If you ever have the privilege of attending the San Francisco Symphony, go for the side terrace seats. It's a whole different experience.

We got out of there about 10pm and walked back to our car. I'm not wild about walking through strange cities late at night, but we had no problems and nobody stuck a ticket on my car. There was still a pretty good traffic mess trying to get back out of the city, but all in all it was a great night. I'm glad we could go.

It was a nice weekend, and it was certainly wonderful to see the girl again after six weeks away from home.