Vacation

Time to visit the land of my birth, chocolate digestives, clotted cream and sky-rocketing prices (they can only dream of $4 per gallon gas over there). So I'll say goodbye to my IDfor 10 days or so, and goodbye to a good deal of hard-earned while I'm there!

It'll be nice though - we rarely go there in the summer time. Hopefully it'll stop raining long enough for a trip to the beach! And hopefully stimulate more stray thoughts for this Internet Diary!

Denver Philosophy

Went to my first meeting of the Denver Philosophical Meetup group last week. More interesting than the discussion was the cast of stereotypical philosophy types that I was hoping to avoid. Miss AnythingGoes, who when I ventured that the topic "What is fundamentalism?" was not one for philosophy, retorted "everything is philosophical". Mr ItsAllJustLanguage who sees talk as merely conceptual - God is just a concept... tables are concepts... yea, until someone breaks one over your head (which is what I felt like doing!). Mr ISoundProfoundWithMyRussianAccent, so I'll say something stupid (like metaphysics starts with error) and watch people buy it because eet sounds conveencink from my mouth. Oh, and Ms IHaveToRelateEverythingToBuddhism, which I apparently don't understand!

And to think I passed up the Rush concert to go. Darn, but I was expecting so much more. I'll give it one more chance next month... maybe I was being a bit of a Mr HeadInTheCloudsAboveItAll.

Thoroughly Modern

I didn't know the Colorado Symphony were doing an end of season recap concert until a singing buddy who is in the Symphony Chorus offered a pair of tickets for 2 bucks! Nice seats too, right behind the pianist, a young lady by the name Natasha Paremski. For 2 bucks we got 2 of the best of American modern music - Bernstein's Chichester Psalms and Corigliano's Piano Concerto (sorry Aaron, I wouldn't put your stuff in that category!). Both are modern in spirit and sound, and yet are not lacking in musically the way many modern pieces that grate on the nerves are. The Psalms have wonderfully dissonant choral writing surrounding the wistfully plaintiff boy treble part in the middle.

The Concerto was a tour de force the like of which I haven't seen in a long time. Little miss Paremski launched body and soul into a piano part that makes the Rach 3 seem like Fur Elise! A part that requires simultaneous playing at both extremes of the piano, huge leaps of the left hand to hit bottom B flats, nimble dancing fingers and strong parallel chords. The piece reminded me of the great Stravinski ballets, particularly Rite of Spring, with its wildness, rythmic intensity - and great tunes. A first rate gig for 2 bucks, of the most exciting concerts I've ever been lucky enough to attend! CSO - you rock!