Musings on ballet, classical music, the violin, and life
The Classical Girl Ask someone who’s seen the 1940 animated film, Fantasia, which piece they best remember, and the majority will respond with, “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” or “the one with Mickey Mouse.” (Runners up might include Bach’s “Toccata and Fugue,” Tchaikovsky’s “Waltz of the Flowers,” or Mussorgsky’s “Night on Bald Mountain,” but that’s a blog for another time.) … Read more
I wrote my first post on this in 2013, mere months after I’d started my blog. I didn’t have a lot of posts or readers back then. I’d feel lucky to get twenty views a day, and I’d savor that number, cheering when it rose to thirty and feeling teary when it dropped to ten … Read more
I’ve never attended the symphony before with the sense that I might not stay for the program’s second half, but that was my thinking when I entered San Francisco Symphony’s Davies Hall on a recent Sunday afternoon. The first of the program’s two semi-staged works was Ravel’s Ma Mère l’Oye (“Mother Goose”) featuring dancers from … Read more
To celebrate Mother’s Day all month long, enjoy the recently released Other Stages, for 99 cents through May, a “motherhood meets the performing arts” conclusion to the Ballet Theatre Chronicles. Today I wish everyone a Happy Mother’s Day, and I mean everyone. Because, however the dice rolled for you in that department, someone gave birth … Read more
You know the phenomenon: you hear some beautiful yet unfamiliar classical music being played on the radio, but you don’t have access to the details like its title or its composer. It stops you in your tracks because it’s so beautiful and fresh, and you mentally scroll through possibilities. Mozart? I had, after all, overheard … Read more