September 2004
Nadine, your concert, as always, was absolutely wonderful. I think you were performing for an audience of your greatest fans, men and women who love architecture, adore classical music and sincerely appreciate what you are accomplishing with restoring forgotten treasures to repetoire. The performance could have charmed everyone, people new to classical music as well as people who prefer newer music. Two men who had just made the third and final bus had driven all the way from Toronto, crossing by ferry the St. Clair River at Sombra - Marine City, drawn by the winning combination of music and architecture. They were keen to know the location of all Frank Lloyd Wright homes in Detroit because they were making a weekend of it. Several friends sadly had other plans by the time I forwarded the concert announcement, all of them keen fans of music and the Smith House.
In fact, I heard no cicadas, I think they were cicadas , those insects that humm and buzz in the trees in late Summer, in the minutes before the concert. During the performance, these insects began to sing in response to Velda and your strings ! I remarked that the trees were swinging in the breeze a little out of tempo to your trio, but the clouds, white fluffy cumulous thank goodness, scudded over the twig tips as if choreographed. I am hoping the person who started jamming on his drum set during the first movement received an invitation, to hear the performance after he politely ceased, and I believe I saw a rock - and - rolling type guy with an orange wristband hearing the music from a number of viewpoints. After last week's double tragedy in Russia, it was poignant to witness ten jet-liners passing stately and safely over our heads as we all listened in enchantment.
I believe the old - fashioned (modern when the Smith house was built, but now) doorwall caused a little bit of awkwardness. If only one of the Cranbrook staff had called the performers outside, introduced you in turn, and allowed us to properly applaud the three of you. To add to the awkwardness, we all know we listened to your performance during a charmed interval --- and we had to beat the coming storm back to the art museum.
I felt inspired and full of the sweetness of life, due either to the music or the two cookies I enjoyed, so I hiked up Ponvalley and walked along Lone Pine's median, watching lighting flashing on the face of a salmon-tinted cumulous slightly to the north. I walked the mile and a half stroll to the art museum in time to see the second bus arrive, after getting slightly lost in the cloisters and garths and dormitories east of the Cranbrook coliseum.
Marla attended with her husband, Evan, and she is new to "Chamber Music at the Scarab Club", and all of the 'spin-off' groups that are linked together by Velda and you. Her friend Jeff and I are plotting to write a number of great literary works in the upcoming months, so I am hoping she will review the concert as well. It helps to give feedback to partner organizations, such as Cranbrook and the Smith House foundation, and I will be happy to write again in support of your efforts when it will help.
All the best,
Will Juntunen
As I wrote later to two specialists in Cicadas, who never responded. The great ones always write back ...
John and David (Entymologists At UConn):
On Friday, September 3, 2004, I was attending an outdoor concert in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. The concert took place at the Smith House, a Frank Lloyd Wright home in the Usonian series, located south of Lone Pine Road, close to the Cranbrook Educational Community. When I arrived for the concert at 7:00 PM, I was given a tour of the grounds, and I didn't hear the song of cicadas at all. During the concert, a performance of sonorous pieces for piano, cello and violin, I heard one or two cicadas in the trees above singing their song, and it seemed to be in response to the music. They did not sing for long. Perhaps I am imagining this interaction, I am given to poetic license, so I found your Cicadas of Michigan web site ( http://insects.ummz.lsa.umich.edu/fauna/Michigan_Cicadas/Michigan/index.htm l), and I am now writing for your opinion.
As I wrote to the cellist:
In fact, I heard no cicadas, I think they were cicadas, those insects that humm and buzz in the trees in late Summer, in the minutes before the concert. During the performance, these insects began to sing in response to Velda and your strings !
And as the cellist responded in a note to me:
You mention the cicadas (I did not know the name, thank you). I recorded the concert (educational purpose) and you can hear twice this wave of buzzing sounds. I will have to listen now for interaction with the music.
I am forwarding your recordings and pictures to the cellist, Nadine, so that she can know more about the cultured insects in her audience.
Will Juntunen TI Automotive System Engineer Desk: 586-427-8117 Cell: 586-764-3640 Fax: 586.758.6883
No comments:
Post a Comment