A Week of Concerts

So Thursday night post rehearsal, I took to the streets of Manhattan to hit up a concert a friend of mine was doing at Lincoln Center. (I can't believe I get to say that! Congratulations Esteli!)

Now since I'm a cheapskate and the night was young, I actually ended up walking all the way from 72nd on the UES to 66th on the UWS. If that doesn't sound far, it isn't - if you cross through the park that is; but of course I'm a weenie and would never cross the park at night, so I had to go the roundabout way. Which wasn't too bad because, well, New York is beautiful.

Plus there's always somebody about, so the city always feels alive. Not that I would know, because usually, this would be my bedtime. Oops, grandma alert! So yes, it was quite a miracle that I even made it to the concert, let alone lasted the whole hour.

The concert was AMAZEBALLS. My friend Esteli is in an up and coming ensemble called Roomful of Teeth. They do some really amazing things with sound, so I would definitely recommend a listen (although it is a little out there, so be prepared!).



But that wasn't the end of it! Friday night was spent crossing off another item off my New York To-Do List (I really should publish that baby at some point, shouldn't I?) - watching a symphony at Fisher Hall. I was actually really excited, because A) it was a chance to dress up, duh and B) Emmanuel Ax was playing and he's really, really good.

Beautiful atrium and hall at Lincoln Center.

 Except that the concert itself wasn't so stellar due to some sound issues the orchestra seemed to be having. Like, oh, playing way louder than the pianist and not keeping in tempo. After 15 years of playing piano (quite seriously, I might add), the little things really stick out and I get to be that annoying person that loudly whispers, I can't believe they just DID that. Thankfully my friend E is a music major and shared my pain. They did fix that problem ... in the second half, when dear Manny wasn't even playing. So there's that. But at least I got to test out a new outfit, which is always a win in my book. What isn't a win is that my friend E convinced me that we should take all the photos on her phone - aka they shall never again see the light of day because it will take her a decade a year to upload them. So look for an outfit post from me in October 2013.

Of New Adventures and Acquisitions

So I am trying to make my life less of a get-up-work-school-collapse-at-home-in-an-exhausted-heap kind of thing - I mean, that's what I did in Montreal, and at the end of three years, my friend who came to visit me ended up seeing more in her 1 week visit than I did in my whole stay there.

And I am NOT going to squander New York City this way!

So I made this whole huge list of all the places I want to visit and all the things I want to do (I basically watched Friends all over again to see what fun things they did and then I googled 'top NYC attractions' ... yes, I am imaginative). And I try to do a new-ish thing every week.

So I walked to the Brooklyn Bridge! (Or rather, I walked cross town, then took the 6, and then walked the bridge). Sooo, the thing about the bridge is that yes, you can have really beautiful views of both Brooklyn and NYC, but it's under construction now (and who knows when they'll be done ... like 2013 or something), so you're actually walking in this tunnel of tarping and steel beams until about the middle, when you suddenly get a bit of the view. So I think I'll definitely come back in a couple of years to see what it's really supposed to look like, but for now, I'm satisfied with my bridge adventure.

And speaking of adventure ... I was walking back home and I realized that I really wanted ... a guitar. So I literally walked into a guitar store (where a really nice young man helped me out ... damn, musicians sure have something about them!) and got myself a guitar.

 

It's my new baby. I'm literally strumming it all the time. Now, the tips of my left-hand fingers feel like they've been through the grater, sure, but it's still fun! I look forward to annoying the Internet in the future with renditions of all the songs that are in my iTunes library played on guitar. (Heads up, there's 2000 of them. Not quite sure how Pitbull will sound played on guitar, but we'll see when we get to that ....).