Culture Marathon

Starting Friday July 19 th and ending yesterday, July 28th, my wife, Jean,  and I served as greeters and/or ushers at 8 concerts at Tanglewood and attended 3 plays.

Among the concerts, the most out of the ordinary for me was last Tuesday's. The headline act was "Bare Naked Ladies" . I was pretty excited when my wife chose this concert for us to work at, but then I found out, as I suspected, it was a case of false advertising. The group comprises four Canadian males, who fortunately, though not well dressed, are very far from bare or naked. Their soft rock was not awful, but was not particularly interesting either. They were preceded by an interesting British comedy singer, a conventional rock/dance music known as Guster, who seem to believe that volume is the only real virtue, and an interesting contemporary rock group with jazz overtones called Ben's Fold Five, an odd name for a trio (more false advertising?). This last group has a very dedicated local following.

We heard some very fine classical music. Unlike the previous two years, I was not very impressed by some of the lesser known conductors appearing this summer. Beware of conductors more interested in making their ideas known, than in conveying the true beauty of the music.

Among the plays we saw was "None But The Lonely Heart", a compilation of lovely chamber music and correspondence and journal entries by Tchaikovsky and some correspondence from a woman who supported him for a dozen years without ever coming face to face with him.

We also saw "Heroes" a play about  three French WW I veterans ending their days in a nursing home.  My wife thought it was very sad, but I found it reassuring and even inspiring. The heroes, despite their frailties retained wits, interest, and hopes, and a true camaraderie, all of which made their days worthwhile.

The last play we saw was a youthful ( at least from our point of reference) rendition of "A Midsummer Night's Dream", which was great fun.

Also got about 100 miles of riding in in the past ten days. To paraphrase Churchill, it was too little, too slow.