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An Evening With Michael Feinstein and Betty Buckley – Ravinia – August 1, 2021

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The last time I was at Ravinia was August 2010. In case you don’t remember, that was before the pandemic. I saw Crosby, Stills, and Nash, or at least a video of them on a large screen on the lawn. The place was jammed. Excursions to the bathroom required detailed planning.

Last night was different. Parking was easy, as was wandering the grounds and using the facilities.

I sat in the pavilion (free tickets, so I didn’t have to mortgage my home, though parking was the price of a long weekend in the Catskills), where COVID spacing was in effect, as apparently was disinterest, based upon the number of empty seats around us.

And, as far as I know, neither Buckley nor Feinstein have their own craft cannabis brand, as Crosby does.

This was sort of a make-up game for me, having missed Buckley in Hello Dolly when she decided to take the night off the night I went to that show.

Well, fool me twice, shame on me. Buckley showed up this time, but well over halfway through the show, and then sang only two songs on her own (not including that one) and three or four forgettable duets with Feinstein (not exactly Nat King and Natalie Cole), who was otherwise wonderful (worth the price of parking), singing beautifully even though his facial muscles did seem to be stuck in one position.

Lakeview Orchestra – On the Lawn at St. Michael – July 25, 2021

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I arrived, chair in hand, five minutes before the scheduled starting time, at the hottest part of the day, and saw no one I recognized, not even the people who had invited me, among the throng of 10-15 people. I waited around for 15 minutes, entertained by the erection of a gazebo canopy for the musicians. Gazpacho and canapes for everyone would have been better.

Finally, a single guitar player took his position and was, I think, introduced by a woman whose voice carried maybe five feet, at best. Still no one there I knew, so I decided to take a walk, the obvious destination being the Dairy Queen just under a mile away, for a chocolate milk shake.

I took my time and got back 40 minutes later, just in time to see that the orchestra had grown from one to five, and was preparing to play a Mozart clarinet quintet. Attendees now numbered 40, about 10 of whom had instrument cases with them, but still no one even remotely identifiable to me.

I stayed long enough to hear the church bells provide percussion for the group at the top of the hour, though, disappointingly, not with the quintessential Westminster Quarters ditty, and then decided to head back to air conditioning, now indifferent to finding anyone or listening to any music.

Grant Park Music Festival – July 23, 2021

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The program said “Blow, Fly, Pop!!’s orchestration is unlike any other. “ That, my friends, is truth in advertising. It looked like a kids’ party (sans scary clown) gone terribly wrong, with the string section starting the piece by waving plastic pencil boards through the air.

And yet, though the sound of the gym ball being thumped didn’t have quite the gravitas of that of a bass drum, and the third balloon the percussionist popped was out of tune (perhaps suffering from an inflation problem, like the economy), the selection wasn’t terrible.

So I got over any disappointment that the piece was not, as I had wrongly anticipated from a too quick reading of the website, “Pop the Cherry” by Blowfly.

The evening moved from a selection reminiscent of minors to two classical pieces in minor keys, Shostakovich’s Piano Concerto No. 1, and Dvorak’s Symphony No. 9 (New World Symphony), which is familiar to movie fans, perhaps for its use in films like Clear and Present Danger and The Departed, but more likely for its place in Killer Tomatoes Eat France!, the fourth sequel to Attack of the Killer Tomatoes.

Broadway in your Backyard – Porchlight Music Theatre – Washington Square Park – July 18, 2021

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If you don’t count Piff the Magic Dragon, and I don’t, the last in-person, no scientist involved, theatrical event (as opposed to instrumental concert, by my definition, which is the only one that counts, as it’s my blog), I had attended before last Sunday was on February 25, 2020. I’m still waiting for the first indoor one, but not until at least the fall, and not anxiously.

In the park I’m surrounded by grass and trees and feel a gentle breeze on my back. In the Ruth Page Auditorium, where Porchlight normally performs, I’m surrounded by the walls of a 1927 building that may or may not have a ventilation system.

At the park event I sat in my own folding chair, which is far more comfortable than any seat at Ruth Page, and placed it so that I didn’t have to rub elbows with strangers exhaling in my immediate vicinity. My view was somewhat limited by overhanging tree foliage, but that’s still better than sitting behind Andre the Giant, which I always wind up doing at the theater, even though he died in 1993.

So, like the groupie I am, I’m looking forward to attending three future Backyard programs in three different parks in August. Have chair will travel.

Grant Park Music Festival – July 16, 2021

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Part of the crowd started leaving during a fine rendition of Sibelius’s Symphony No. 5. (I stayed all the way through the Finnish.) Their departure would have been understandable earlier in the evening during Brouwer’s Concerto for Viola and Orchestra, which was forgettable, hopefully.

It wasn’t raining. Three different weather services told me so. And yet, I and the other attendees were getting wet.

What I hadn’t taken into account was the definition of rain.

Rain is composed of water drops with diameters greater than 0.02 inches (.5 mm), whereas drizzle is defined as water drops with diameters less than 0.02 inches. Who knew. I didn’t have anything with me to measure the drops, in either the metric or imperial system, but they apparently didn’t rise to the necessary level to be predicted by any local or national bureaus.

So It didn’t rain. It drizzled. But I still got wet.

 

 

Grant Park Music Festival – July 14, 2021

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Once again I skipped the first half of the concert, and the correctness of my decision was supported by others telling me upon my arrival that what I had missed had been “painfully awful.“ Then they left.

No matter. I then had the pleasure of listening to Beethoven’s Symphony No. 1. Unfortunately I also had the displeasure of listening to Beethoven’s biggest fan, an obnoxious guy, with the lungs of an opera singer, sitting a few rows behind me.

Mr. X, as I will call him, apparently was a drop-in (and, I’m guessing, a dropout) who didn’t know ahead of time what the program was, as suggested by his war whoop, ala an over-served soccer (excuse me, football) hooligan who was far less civilized than the Geico Neanderthal-like cavemen who were offended by their characterization in the 2004 commercials, when the conductor introduced the piece and then again after the first movement.

I then quickly moved to the other side of the seating bowl, as I fully expected him to shout out “let’s get ready to rumble” before the next movement started, which might make sense at the next concert, given that the program includes three dance episodes by Leonard Bernstein, albeit not from West Side Story, but rather On the Town, (the play, not the movie, so I will be able to visualize real dancers, not Frank Sinatra).

A Scientist Walks into a Bar – The Hideout – July 13, 2021

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March 10, 2020 was the last time I walked into the bar at The Hideout to hear a scientist. That time the room was jammed and I was attending events at one venue or another a few times a week. This time I sat outside, with a smattering of others, had to show proof of vaccination, and none of those other venues have reopened yet.

So I was excited to hear someone talk about meteorites. You take when you can get.

Maria Valdes has a PhD in Geochemistry and Cosmochemistry, which I didn’t even know existed, and is the Robert A. Pritzker Curator for Meteoritics and Polar Studies at the Filed Museum. We have so much in common. Her earliest ambition was to be a dentist. I have a dentist. As a child, she went to DNA camp. I never went to camp, but I have DNA. Her specialty is calcium isotopes. I drink milk.

She’s going on a trip to Antarctica to search for micrometeorites, because, although they’re all around us, about 5,200 metric tons of them falling to the Earth every year (she says some would probably fall out of your hair if you shook your head), they’re easier to find where they stand out against the ice and snow.

She has held in her hands, to show to bored museum donors, a part of the Black Beauty meteorite, original weight 319.8 grams, found in 2011 in the Sahara Desert, and, as of 2018, having a sales price of $10,000 per gram. I think I’ll go shake my head and see what falls out.

Grant Park Music Festival – July 9, 2021

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I timed it perfectly to arrive at a seat just as the chorus was departing its upstage loft after the first piece, as I saw no reason to have their voices interfere with the pleasure of listening to the symphony, just as I don’t like it when people in the theater talk during a performance.

I did get to see that the departing singers were masked, though not in the style of those on the television show, such as Nick Lachey as the winner Piglet in the recent finale, and probably not, unfortunately for the purpose of muting their voices like one of the brass players, whose current “normal’ placement on stage is in the same loft, so that they won’t spew viral particles on the rest of the orchestra.

I still got to listen to Barber and Brahms, without a hint of rain or the siren accompaniments of two days earlier, replaced this time by the off-key sound of overhead helicopters, and also without the hint of a cicada chorus, Chicago seemingly having been spared this year despite the fact that we have reached, per Climate Central, the necessary ground temperature and rainfall to cue their emergence.

On the way home I saw a sign for a psychic, with walk-ins welcome, and considered it for a moment, but, after peeking in the doorway, I dismissed it as a scam, as a real psychic would know that no one would want to climb two flights of steep stairs for a reading.

Grant Park Music Festival – July 7, 2021

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The Grant Park Music Festival reopened its figurative doors after over a year off, and though I chose not to attend the Fourth of July concert, which quixotically took place on July 2nd and 3rd, I declared my independence from Covid incarceration by wending my way to the park for the first “real” concert , which featured Joyce Yang entrancing the audience with her masterful rendition of Grieg’s popular Piano Concerto in A minor, Op. 16, which even I attempted, fairly unsuccessfully, to play as a child, though, for years I would pound out the first three bars, and only that, whenever I had the opportunity, as a way of pretending, for anyone within earshot, that I might actually know what I was doing. (I take the preceding 123-word sentence as evidence that my brain has not completely atrophied during my forced layoff, though not necessarily evidence of any writing skills.)

The concert closed with a rousing version of Rossini’s Overture to William Tell, the conclusion of which was timed perfectly with the onset of the rain, such that the crowd’s standing ovation began with 20 seconds left in the piece, as the attendees, so unaccustomed to being in such a situation, flailed about, with no direction home, like a group of rolling stones, getting spit upon from on high.

As happy as I am that things are opening up, the timing is somewhat unfortunate, as I have just discovered Netflix’s apparently unlimited number of Turkish soap operas (dizi for the aficionados).

Rush Hour Concert – The Romantic Piano Trios – June 15, 2021

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Having survived last week’s brave new world experience of an indoor concert with masks and limited capacity, I went back to St. James Cathedral, where MingHuan Xu (violin), Alexander Hersh (cello), and Winston Choi (piano) serenaded us with lovely pieces from Robert Schumann and Fanny Mendelssohn-Hensel.

I’m told that the restrictions may be taken off for next week’s concert. I’ll be pleased to go without a mask, but have a fondness for the current attendance rules, as it means that I don’t have to mingle with too many people, especially those who have come out of hibernation with an apparent insatiable need to shake hands, which is so 2019, the last time I (or anyone else?) had a cold.

I wonder if the cicada that may, depending on the weather, soon be emerging from their own dormant state (the app Cicada Safari states that periodical cicadas emerge in large numbers when the soil temperature reaches 64º F and often after a soaking rain) also will want to shake hands (or legs in their case). I might prefer that.