I won 2 tickets from KCRW on Thursday to the Pasadena Symphony. They were playing Variaciones Concertantes, Op. 23 by Alberto Ginastera, Concerto Fantasy for Two Timpanists and Orchestra, by Philip Glass, and Concert for Orchestra, by Witold Lutoslawski.. The first was okay, but too light for my taste. The 2nd, the one by Philip Glass, was by far the best, but still not really wonderful. It was written around the tympanis and I felt like the background instruments were more interesting to listen to then the tympanis which were way too over bearing, until the end. I didn't care for the 3rd at all, too loud and disconjoined. Separate parts of it standing on their own may be okay, but as a whole piece it didn't really do anything for me.

It's so different to go to a concert and hear music rather then listening to a CD. It's like when you go to a concert the surprise of music is taken away. You can tell when the harp is going to come in, a solo violin, or the whole string section. I don't like having the surprise taken away like that, but I do enjoy seeing the musicians play their instruments. It's so weird that the movements that they make correlates to music. I really enjoy watching musicians play.

The audience was an older crowd. Most of them looked the type that has subscriptions to the theater. It was fun to watch all of them with their involuntary twitches. The woman in the row in front of me and to the left kept puckering her lips. The man in front of me and to the right had some sort of blinking disorder. The man to Angelia's right simply couldn't stand still while listening to the music. You'd think he was a teenage girl at N'Sync concert, except that he was a black guy in his 70's.

One the violinists had to shush a nurse who was wheeling around an old man on a wheelchair.

The tickets were worth $104, so I guess we had ourselves a nice expensive date. Unfortunately I didn't see Emo there. I wrote him an e-mail but his address is not listed on his site. I'll have to look it up somewhere else.