Meet the Music, Nov. 10,2019

We have been seeing Bruce Adolphe's Meet the Music performances with our eight-year-old daughter since last year, our next step up from the Little Orchestra Society performances (see posts of 12/6/15, 2/9/16, 11/13/16, 3/12/17) and recommended for kids six and older.  Sunday the theme was Oceanophony, a combination of visual images, poetry and a chamber ensemble consisting of Llewellyn Sanchez Werner on piano, Alice-Ivy Pemberton on violin, Estelle Choi on cello, Xavier Foley on double bass, Sooyun Kim on flute, Romie De Guise-Langlois on clarinet, Brad Balliett on bassoon and Victor Caccese on percussion.  They played music by Bruce Adolphe composed for the 100th anniversary of the Birch Aquarium of the Scripps Institute of Oceanography in California, introduced by whimsical poetry from Kate Light read by Adolphe and accompanied by photographs of each fish, from the Scripps Institute.

The music was somewhat evocative of a particular fish -- especially for the Octopus, with an octet performing -- and generally at the level of well structured film music, though presumably we only saw still photos of the fish --including marine snow, pufferfish, coral, stoplight parrotfish, sea horse and sarcastic fringehead fish -- because movies might have distracted one from the music. After the performance Adolphe took questions, most of which were serious questions from the kids for the performers (who all said they practiced as much as they could, up to eight hours a day). The concert was held in the Rose Theatre, a lovely venue of reasonable size usually used for jazz concerts.

Everyone listens to music differently and learning to visualize while listening to music can add to the pleasure of it; though not everyone does this it can help one to enjoy the music. For instance, when I hear music that Balanchine used for a ballet, such as Bach's concerto in D minor for two violins for Concerto Barocco, I find myself often, though not always, visualizing the ballet.  Different people respond to different music and Meet the Music does an excellent job of introducing music and the different ways it is composed and played.