Last night, we went to one concert in a series called "What Makes It Great." The guy who runs these events, Rob Kapilow, is every bit as nerdy and caffienated as many of the computer geeks I work with. It just so happens that his love is music. Last night focused on four Gershwin songs. He pulled apart the melody, the harmony, the words, the rhythm, then put them back together again so that we heard them completely differently. He had us clapping out the rhythms and singing the "bad way" (his way) and the "Gershwin way" (the great way). And there were two bonus songs he threw in at the end.
He observed that classical music never changes. Performers use very subtle techniques to make the music their own. By contrast, modern music thrives by being changed. A performer makes a piece his own by altering everything but the true essence of the piece. He also mentioned that he'd been part of a symposium about the U.S. Constitution as contrasted with music, in which the participants discussed whether the Constitution is more like classical music in that it should never be changed, or more like modern music in that it should move and adapt to modern times.
The evening was just wonderful. We'll hope to catch more of these WMIG performances in future seasons.
We went to the local Audubon sanctuary today where they have a model farm and a lot of injured wild animals held in captivity. We saw a stunningly beautiful red fox that was black and grey (apparently, a rare coloring, as one might imagine from its name). We stood and blinked it at for a while and it seemed to calm down, especially after the loud lady left who kept talking about how cool it would be to turn the animal into a coat. Good thing for her that there was a fence between the fox and the human. And good thing she beat it out of there -- I might have knocked her over with my glares.
I had my camera with me and noticed people "checking out my equipment" as if we were in a very high-end gym. (The farm is in one of our wealthiest suburbs.) It happens that I have a very low-end digital SLR and I received a few bemused looks, though people were kind enough to continue talking to me even after noticing my -er- equipment.
We thought there might be some baby sheep or goats, but not quite yet. There was a goat who was pregnant with twins and about as wide as she was long. Robert said he noticed the babies moving inside her. There was a little boy carried by his father in a backpack who became terribly frightened in the chicken coop when the rooster announced himself. We also went to the deer enclosure and observed three deer who persist in foraging even though they're well fed every day. They're deer -- it's their job.
The horses were wearing thick winter coats. One was posing for other visitors. We saw that the barn cat was still around, as evidenced by her food and water bowls, but she was probably hanging out in the loft, waiting for us all to leave. There was one pig in the new pig barn, a female. The other pigs were in a trailer, about to be moved. I think they were being moved to "chillier climes" after a final adventure. This is the reality of life on a farm.
It is nice to visit in the quiet of winter. There are always a few people hanging around, but it's good to skip the summer crowds.
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