Civic Orchestra of Chicago

The Theory of Nothing

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Just because the world has ground to a halt doesn’t mean that I should stop writing, or does it? Have I misinterpreted the signs? Anyway, to help us all pass the time, here are some notes about some of the things I’m not doing.

Speaking of signs, and the stealing thereof, I’m not watching baseball games. I wouldn’t anyway, but my class on the Literature of Baseball at Northwestern’s Osher Lifelong Learning Institute will be held online, instead of in person, which means I don’t get to indulge in the delicious home-made brownies that a member of the class, who is a baker, brings each week.

I’m not watching March Madness or running my pool, which is a shame because I concocted some bizarre rules this year in the hope that no one else would understand them. In that vein, in the absence of games, I have declared myself the winner of the pool.

Despite having been the Wizard of Oz in Wicked on Broadway, Joel Grey apparently does not have the power to make everything right and so is not going to the 25th Anniversary Porchlight Music Theatre Icons Gala honoring him and neither is anyone else, including me, at least until it gets rescheduled.

I’m not going to the postponed Newberry Library Associates Night, where I was hoping to cop some free wine and cheese and then sneak out before the staff droned on about research that would have bored me to tears.

I’m not going to the American Writers Museum to listen to Gene Luen Yang talk about his new graphic novel Dragon Hoops, as he cancelled his in-person book tour, and instead, according to his website, is touring as a cartoon.

I’m not going to the Civic Orchestra of Chicago’s 100th Anniversary Concert, which was to feature Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 5, which also was performed at the orchestra’s first-ever concert on March 29, 1920. I missed that one too.

Chen Family Quartet, Fourth Presbyterian Church, January 11, 2019; Civic Orchestra of Chicago, Symphony Hall, January 15, 2019; Phillppe Quint, Violin and Marta Aznavoorian, Piano, Dame Myra Hess Memorial Concert, Chicago Cultural Center, January 16, 2019

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While others listening to classical music may try to appreciate its finer points or focus on getting inside the composer’s head, I just like the way it sounds, which leaves my brain free to wander during concerts.

Some day I might pick up a copy of Classical Music for Dummies, cowritten by David Pogue, whom I usually only think about as Techno Claus on CBS Sunday Morning, when I think about him at all, but who also is a monthly columnist for Scientific American.

But, until then, I think about things like the different shades of varnish on the cellos used in the Chicago Civic Orchestra’s terrific concert, which led me to an applied physics article on ‘the importance of the vibro-mechanical properties of varnish, its chemical composition, thickness and penetration into wood.”

It wasn’t so much during Chicago Symphony Orchestra Concertmaster Robert Chen’s brilliant violin solo at Fourth Presbyterian Church, but rather after, that I began thinking about the space itself, when Rush Hour Concerts Artistic Director Anthony Devroye, who filled in on viola with the Chen Family Quartet that day told a couple of us who had trouble seeing from the back that the quartet didn’t use the stage because the asymmetrically curved wall behind it caused acoustic problems – more science.

No science entered my head during the Dame Myra Hess concert, which featured the music of Charlie Chaplin. Quint and Aznavoorian closed with Chaplin’s Smile, from Modern Times, which reminded me of Jimmy Durante singing Make Someone Happy at the end of Sleepless in Seattle, which reminded me of its screenwriter and director Nora Ephron, who was an answer on Jeopardy this week.

In the immortal words of The Statler Brothers’ classic (not classical) Flowers on the Wall (I counted 12 on my guest bathroom wall), “Now don’t tell me I’ve nothin’ to do.”