The Eastman Theater
This past Saturday my hands and feet were surrounded by red velvet and lacquered gold armrests as I enjoyed my own piece of courtly life.
After waiting patiently for only 4 minutes in total silence the conductor finally choose to grace us with his presence. There seems to be a ritual where the audience claps every time this Penguin in his bowtie and tails waddles on and off the stage.
Personally I put my hands together twice and unenthusiastically asked my friend why we are expected to clap before he even begins the first note. Without much of a response showing through her beaming praise, I resigned to ponder this respectful form of applause.
It seems odd that we would show appreciation to this seizure stricken arm waving statue before he even becomes a seizure stricken arm waving statue. I conclude from this experience that maybe we show appreciation because he successfully put one foot in front of the other and made it out onto the stage without going Fidel Castro on those in the front row.
The space was excruciatingly quite before the first note, all sound from the audience deadened in the lush carpets but the scratches of chairs and the large intake of breath for the band carried uninhibited to the dizzying third estate of the theater.
I was required to sit through 5 performances, or pieces, and underneath each performance in my brochure was a number and through some careful calculus and some ease dropping I was able to deduce that these are 'measures'. I can't distinguish between measures but it was quite obvious by the end of the night that the higher the number, the longer you sat before there was a break.
It was through sitting that I understood why the French revolution wasn't stopped before the storming of the Bastille. It is quite obvious to me that King Louis's asleep bottom was still recovering from the awful hours of theater the evening before and probably saw it as unimportant when he was alerted to some peasants who were storming his prison.
The most important thing from this experience was watching some of Rochester's finest young performers play for their community and represent the Eastman school of Music. Consistently, the Musical School is one of the most recognized aspects of Rochester throughout the country.
Routinely our young men of greater Rochester are molded into amazing musical talent for the classical Orchestra's scattered throughout the US. Tonight was one of the many opportunities where a man could take that special friend out to the theater for a priceless evening of high society and only pay for parking. This performance was free.
-IAN
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