lovely weekend

Last spring at our annual Passover celebration, several friends asked Robert when we were going to Tanglewood this summer. Robert was taken by surprise -- was it already time to think about our trip out west? Yes, as it turned out. I'd been asking him to pick a weekend, I'd conspicuously left the brochure out, and after a few reminders, had given up and decided that we'd try again in 2008.

Robert was so mortified that he'd missed all this attempted communication that he sprang into action. He found the brochures, which I'd finally put away, and picked some concerts. He ordered tickets and reserved a spot at one of our favorite B&Bs.

And this past weekend we went!

We saw two concerts at Tanglewood, both conducted by Kurt Masur, who seemed to be in top form. KM is a favorite of both the BSO and its fans. The soloist Friday night was Joshua Bell, another of our favorites, and well-loved by the audience. The "guest artist" on Sunday was Kurt Mazur, himself, in honor of his recently-celebrated 80th birthday. And the music was lovely. On Friday, the orchestra placed two pieces by Prokofiev (surprisingly listenable) and Beethoven's 1st Symphony. On Sunday, we heard three Mozart symphonies, 39, 40, and 41. The latter is also known as Jupiter.

On Saturday night, we went to Jacob's Pillow for a wild "variety show" of a brand-new all-male troupe, Bad Boys of Dance, led by the ballet-trained Rasta Thomas. There were beautiful balletic leaps and twirls, vertical and horizontal splits, the macarena, hiphop, tap, and references to the Wizard of Oz, all mixed into one of the most enjoyable evenings of dance that I've seen in ages.

We also dashed off to the Norman Rockwell museum and the Clark, which is currently showing a terrific exhibit of the "Unknown Monet," pastels and drawings from early to late years. A delight from both museums was seeing pencil sketches that were later turned into paintings, so you could look at the process from rough draft and scattered ideas to finished piece.

And it turned out that Jacob's Pillow was holding an open house this weekend, so we went to that too. We went for the dance, but stumbled on a couple of presentations about African American Heritage in the area, and related to the Pillow. One of the presenters talked about the Underground Railroad in the area and her research to learn more about it; the other talked about his uncle who was a lumberman and who provided the beams for the main theater at Jacob's Pillow. We later chatted with the presenters and other representatives. Robert bought their recently published book and I learned that the daughter of the woman who spoke about the Underground Railroad was Norman Rockwell's model for The Problem We All Live With.

Oh yes, and we bumped into friends, picnicked with other friends out for the day, and caught up a bit with the lives of our innkeepers. A full weekend; I'm a tad exhuasted, but otherwise quite happy.