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Insult to the brain

Aiee. Aiee. Aiee.smiley - headhurts

The trumpet guy in our brass quintet offered to get us free tickets for this weekend's orchestral concert; delighted to be presented with the opportunity to hear Brahms and Saint-Saens and Humperdinck in the same night, I impulsively accepted, and organised a little concert party for four. In retrospect, I should've asked myself *why* in space the Box Office people would want to give away perfectly good concert tickets.

We figured it out too late. Turned out that it was our local conductor's turn on the concert stage. smiley - yikes Okay, okay.... I know that she's our countrywoman (and one of the few in our international orchestra) and that we should therefore support her but.... she's *dreadful*. Utterly awful. And it's not personal bias either, because almost everybody else I know feels the same way, and a number of the players themselves think of her as painfully superfluous.smiley - erm

Anyway...smiley - headhurts

The concert was really, *really bad*. They started with Humperdinck's Hansel & Gretel overture, which started on the wrong footing because the horns messed up the opening and the woodwinds went out of tune and all. And then they moved onto Saint-Saens' Cello Concerto in A minor, which featured a cellist who played *absolutely* beautifully (his instrument had a very distinct, mellow voice)... but whose performance was ruined by the intrusiveness of the orchestra. And then there was the Brahms symphony --- which was singularly the most *dispassionate* piece of Brahms music that we have *ever* heard. If you'd wanted an example of what the word 'jarring' meant, you would have had to look no further than this. The loud bits weren't half as bad as the slow lyrical bits, only everybody seemed to be playing at the same volume (which is an awful case of bad balancing).

If that had been all there had been, we might have walked out of the hall merely disgruntled. But nooo.... she had to mistake our cold reception for warm appreciation, and troop out *two* encores. The second wasn't too bad because it was classical; the first was nothing short of spectacularly *bad*. The moment she said, 'Here's something to lower your blood pressure', we braced ourselves for the worst. It was what seemed suspiciously like her own arrangement of a very famous, very beautiful local oldie -- only the way it was arranged, it more resembled a failed mating between the Frankenstein monster and a balrog (I know, it's an insult to the balrog, but -). Now I've played or heard at least 8 different arrangements of this piece, and so knew from the first four notes what it was. And lo it was bad! The prolonged introduction was agonisingly painful (it was a painful mix of really odd chords that didn't progress well and Arabic scales -- what the hey?), and when the theme finally came in it was no better. And when the snare drum came in right out of nowhere.....smiley - doh I don't think people have yet invented words to describe the feeling of utter dismay and hopelessness and incredulity I felt, but let's just say that I sunk down low in my seta and sat through the piece with my eyes scrunched shut.

And lest you think I'm being overly critical, Tycho's face was frozen in a grimace; after the concert we bumped into our band conductor, who had even harsher words for it than Tycho's and mine combined.

As I type this, I'm trying to flush out all the incredulity and trauma with Glenn Miller, but it's not really working.....smiley - erm

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Latest reply: Apr 24, 2004

Lindberg!

Well... the brass quintet practice is going pretty well, considering I'm the most junior player in terms of experience (4 years), as compared to the others, who've had something like more than a decade of experience under their belt. It's still sort of strange to be playing trombone with a bunch of working guys who are more than half a decade older than me (do I get to crack 'old coot' jokes here?smiley - winkeye), but I'm profiting a great deal from their expert advice and instructions.smiley - ok Last week's practice was thoroughly *awful* because I hadn't gotten the groove yet, and wasn't feeling the music vibes, and thus played some really weird notes; this week it went so much better, because I'd practiced a little, and I'm beginning to get comfortable playing with them.

By the way, I recently heard a recording of Christian Lindberg playing Vittorio Monti's 'Csardas'. On *trombone*. The man's insane!!!smiley - yikes After listening to it, I didn't know whether to feel motivated to work harder, or break down and cry.

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Latest reply: Apr 11, 2004

Curioser and curioser

The strangest thing happened to me yesterday. I returned to the hostel rather late, and decided that Chinese takeaway would be just the thing for lunch. When they handed me the Styrofoam packet in a plastic bag, I noticed that there were no utensils inside, and requested a pair of disposable chopsticks. Now I *quite clearly* remember seeing the girl stuffing a pair of wooden chopsticks into the bag... but when I got back to my room, I found that they had mysteriously transformed into a small plastic spoon. smiley - erm I can't explain it. Has the world gone mad while I wasn't looking?

On a less peculiar note: I've been invited to join a local Brass Quintet as trombonist! smiley - wow Practice begins next Thursday (never mind that, like a certain 6-foot ape descendant, I could never get the hang of Thursdays)... and if I understand correctly, we are scheduled to torment the city with Canadian Brass arrangements next month...

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Latest reply: Mar 24, 2004

Body Worlds!

I went for the Body Worlds exhibition for my birthday!smiley - magic (OK OK a couple of days after, but let's not be pedantic about it)

I'd seen a photograph of a person working with what seemed like a human model in the papers some time back, along with a caption saying something about the technician working on a display for von Hagens' Body Worlds exhibition, whatever in space that was. So while I was working on my article about death and decomposition, I thought I'd Google it to see what the exhibition was all about. In doing so I learnt two things: (1) that it was an anatomical display of real human bodies, and (2) it was currently in Singapore. I was practically steaming at the ears at the knowledge that there the exhibition was, just five hours' travel away, and here I was, stuck in the bloody lab. When I complained to my friend Tycho about it, Tycho replied, 'Why don't we go then?' So! acting out of compulsion, we agreed to skive off lab work, went downtown and booked tickets to Sangey, and two days after my birthday we mysteriously disappeared. (which is why my online presence has not been felt for the last four days smiley - winkeye)

The exhibition was, for want of better words, INCREDIBLE. Mind you, we went there knowing what to expect, and with open minds, so there was nothing there that could shock us. We spent the better part of four hours gawking at every full-body display, poking our noses where people generally would not stick them. And in spite of all the scathing reviews it's received, the exhibition was very tastefully done. Despite the dissection (I suppose some critics would prefer to call it *defilement* or *desecration*) and rearrangement, the bodies were all treated with a great deal of respect and - I suppose, by the anatomists who worked on them - loving care. Their poses were all natural and graceful, never embarrassing or demeaning: a chess player bent over a chess table, thoughtfully contemplating his moves; a man gracefully posed with a fencing foil, and another with a javelin, and so on. And it's not as though they were posed for artistic reasons only - they were all positioned so as to reveal as much of their arteries and organs and nerves and muscles as possible.

Hats off to all the parents who brought their kids to the exhibition and explained to them the functions of organs and muscles smiley - ok (I'd have done the same if I had kids of my own); BOO to those idiot girls in front of us, whose only comments regarding the exhibits were, 'geez! Imagine being posed with your arms like that after you're dead! How embarrassing!' and 'That's disgusting!' (Mind you, I wouldn't mind being dissected and posed after death if I could achieve similar grace)

I hear that the exhibition is headed for Frankfurt next. To all of those in Europe - go see it for yourselves! To those of you in the US - hard luck, I hear von Hagens is having difficulty finding warehouse and expo managers bold enough to host the show.

smiley - cheers

PS: The thing that Tycho and I found slightly disconcerting was that as we moved from one exhibit to another, we found ourselves growing increasingly hungry - and it didn't help that we were surrounded by meat, left, right and centre. (here's an important note: we are *NOT* cannibals! we have absolutely no explanation for what happened) So as soon as we were done and had exited the hall, we made a beeline for - Burger King. smiley - erm

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Latest reply: Mar 16, 2004

*Ahem*

Er... what am I supposed to be doing? .. Ah, yes smiley - doh -



Why am I doing this? Er, no reason. No reason at all smiley - biggrin Just eat!

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Latest reply: Mar 11, 2004


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