The Emory Chamber Music Association’s Cooke Noontime Concert Series held at the Carlos Museum is a bit challenging to attend. First of all, it’s at noon on a workday. Secondly, there are two or three buses of residents from retirement homes who get there at around 11:20a and take up more than 75% of the seats and the remaining 25% are generally gone by 11:40a. So you pretty much have to be available for two hours in the middle of a workday, plus you have to pay for parking at a university campus that’s probably nowhere near anywhere you need to be. Then you only get a one hour concert that is often just a collection of single movements extracted from larger works. Generally, it’s not worth it for me to go but, still, if I have the time then I often find myself there wondering how concerned I should be about my addiction to live music. Today, though, was worth it. I had reason to take the day off and got there around 11:15a and, after waiting in the hallway of the third floor of the Museum with the exits all blocked by the crowd until the doors opened at 11:30a, I was able to get a fairly decent seat to hear what turned out to be a pretty amazing concert by cellist Matt Haimovitz and violinist Tim Fain.
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