Shades of Mediocrity

All we could eat

September always flies by; I can hardly believe it's almost gone. It passed so quickly because of all the usual reasons: school starts, everyone's back from vacation, and suddenly everything that waited around all summer needs to be done immediately. For us, this September brought something else: a surfeit of live music, a veritable all-you-can-eat buffet of great performances.

Over the course of two weeks, we heard a St. Paul Chamber Orchestra concert, two Minnesota Orchestra concerts, and saw Patricia Barber at the Dakota. We've subscribed to the SPCO and the Minnesota Orchestra for the past several years, and the beginning of the new season each September is always a little like the return of old friends we haven't seen for a while. We settle back into our familiar seats (well, our seats at Orchestra Hall are different this year, but you get the idea) and bathe in the comforting sounds of an orchestra warming up. For me, those sounds will always be a comfort. They are the sounds of a home I once had, a home I once loved more than anything, and they engender in me a kind of bittersweet homesickness for the orchestra. I don't regret having left that world behind, but at the same time, I'm deeply sad that I'll never be part of it again.

And, oh, the musical riches that have been presented to us! Three weeks into the season, and already we've heard Mendelssohn, Beethoven, Mozart, Sibelius, Bartok, and Stravinsky, along with works new to me by composers I don't know so well, like MacMillan and Martinu. Through dance, we've gained a whole new perspective on a Bartok masterpiece, and we've seen a percussionist dance his way through a great contemporary concerto for every type of instrument you can hit with a stick and get an interesting or beautiful sound out of. We've heard a rousing but nuanced interpretation of Mendelssohn by a chamber orchestra, and we've heard a large orchestra give boisterous, almost frighteningly intense renditions of Beethoven's Eroica and Stravinsky's Rite of Spring. We've been surprised by a few rough edges, and a few unexpected interpretations of favorite moments, and we've shared the triumph and exhiliration of climactic moments. As trained orchestral musicians, it's easy for us to nitpick the details, and it's fun to do some of that. But the overall impact remains the focus, and we don't lose sight of that. There's always more to listen to than we are able.

And then, Patricia Barber: jazz pianist and singer, who performed with a small, intimate combo including drums, bass, and guitar. There is almost nothing more exhilirating and astonishing than seeing four accomplished musicians who really know each other's playing work together in small-group jazz. The constant communication in the midst of the blizzard of technique and musicality: that's amazing enough when it happens in a great classical chamber music performance. But in jazz, where improvisation is added on top of everything else -- it's breathtaking. As with the orchestras, absolute perfection is neither expected nor required (although it's frequently delivered anyway), because it isn't just about the product, it's also about the process. You might know where the musicians are going, but you have no idea how they're going to get there.

Two weeks, four concerts, and we felt uncomfortably stuffed, having gorged on live music until we were almost sick. But in the end, the excess is so good for the soul. September is over, there's still too much to do, the daylight is lessening, and the cold is coming. But I'm as ready as I can be, because I've been fortified by so much great music.