What a great night of dance! Any concerns that I harbored going in that Atlanta Ballet would not pull off this concert were, thankfully, unfounded. The performances by the company as a whole and each dancer individually ranged from decent to excellent and every piece was well realized by the dancers on the stage.
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Before I talk about tonight’s Atlanta Symphony Orchestra concert, I just want to say that I have had the worst luck in seating this season. Although it hasn’t just been the ASO, the ASO has been the worst. Of the 14 ASO concerts that I’ve attended so far this year, I have had issues with fellow audience members making unreasonable amounts of noise, falling asleep, fidgeting, kicking the seats, or smelling bad at every single one of them. Part of this may be because attendance has been higher, but it has been a problem even at concerts that haven’t been well attended and I’ve been to a number of sold out concerts in the past without having any issues. I think that some of it is that they don’t have Sunday matinées anymore so more people are coming who would otherwise be much more alert and comfortable attending at an earlier time of the day. I know that a lot of the issues that I’ve had with noxious ointments or small children are probably a result of that.
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Hobbling down the stairs of the Tula Art Center to MOCA’s space for the Sonic Generator concert was unpleasant, but they gave me some Riesling to dull the pain and rewarded me with a good performance of some pretty interesting music.
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After feeling under the weather for much of the day, I managed to feel more like myself this evening by the time that I went to the Atlanta Chamber Players concert at the New American Shakespeare Tavern. Not that I’m glad that I didn’t feel well enough to go into work this morning, but it was great going to a weeknight concert without being drained by traffic.
Despite having a ticket to sit on the floor, I decided that I’d be better seated in the balcony. The problem with the New American Shakespeare Tavern, which is also one of it’s boons, is that it’s also a restaurant so the floor and box seats are all tables and they are usually filled by the people who are going to be eating there a good hour before a show starts. The empty seats that remained by the time that I arrived were all at awkward angles or behind where the cellists would be sitting, which wouldn’t serve me terribly well when compared with a seat in the center of the balcony. It’s such an intimate venue that even the balcony seats give a good, personal perspective of the stage and I consider the price for the floor seat a very reasonable price for the concert in any seat and have no problem with either ACP or the New American Shakespeare Tavern making a few extra bucks off of me.
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One of the things that I really like about the Emory Chamber Music Society of Atlanta is the way that their concerts are generally programmed with some kind of thread that connects the various pieces being played. The programs often span multiple musical periods but always manage to remain coherent, with some kind of conceptual or musical thematic connection. Tonight’s program for the Vega String Quartet was no exception; the evening began with a piece by the Classical composer Hayden, ended with a Romantic era piece by his student, Beethoven, and sandwiched in-between was an early 20th century modernist piece by Janacek that references a Beethoven sonata.
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There’s a concert that I want to attend on Saturday, so I exchanged my normal season ticket for the ASO for the concert tonight. Overall, it was very well programmed and was an excellent performance. They opened with a world premier by Gandolfi, which was followed by the Suite from The Firebird by Stravinsky. After the intermission, the soloist, Thibaudet, played Ravel’s Piano Concerto and the show concluded with Gershwin’s An American in Paris.
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Every busy Monday should end like this one. I went to a dance performance choreographed by Jonah Bokaer in the elevated patio above the courtyard of the Contemporary. The slight chill in the air was so fitting for the piece. The dancers were dressed in shades of gray, black, and white. The music was a rather generic sounding, though effectively used, collection of softly spoken words on a background of electronic noise.
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