outside of Loscon
Nov. 27th, 2007 07:06 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
calimacA convention at an airport hotel can be convenient for out-of-towners: they can fly right in and not have to worry about difficulties in getting to the hotel. And if they're not planning on going anywhere else, they don't have to worry about hotel parking charges, which here were steep.
But there comes a time when one wants to get out of there, particularly if one does not wish to fly home on Sunday of Thanksgiving weekend. And so on Sunday afternoon as the con ended, I hiked over to the nearest car-rental facility and acquired a 24-hour vehicle (which I parked on a nearby street overnight, LA not having advanced so far as to ban overnight street parking).
But first I took the car downtown, had dinner on Olvera Street, and walked over to the Walt Disney Concert Hall to take in an organ recital. Not my favorite form of music-making, but it was what was on when I could get to it.
This was my first visit to the still newish hall. The first thing you notice inside is that the place is named to the gills. Shiny letters are affixed to the walls everywhere. You can walk up the Henry Mancini Staircase. The actual space where the music is played is not the Walt Disney Concert Hall at all, but the Ralphs/Food4Less Auditorium.
And no less startling than its name the auditorium is. Neither a shoebox nor an amphitheater, it's shaped rather like a crystal glass candy dish, except that it's made of wood. ("What also floats in water?") The performing space near the bottom is in the center, and the seating is on interlocking shell-like shapes that rise on all four sides. Fixed to what is almost arbitrarily the back wall is a huge bristling mass of metal and wooden quills sticking out in all directions, which has been likened to a bag of french fries. These are the organ pipes.
Seated at an electric console on stage, Thomas Trotter, official City Organist of Birmingham, England (I've met the Lord Mayor of Birmingham; now I've heard its City Organist), gave us a fluidly virtuosic performance of a program with the obligatory Bach, Buxtehude, and Durufle, plus a few more unusual items such as a florid 19th-century arrangement of Wagner's Rienzi Overture.
Monday I reverted to an old pastime of my 1980s trips to LA, and puttered amongst the used book and record stores of Hollywood and points south and west. Yes, some of them are still around. Lunch was at the Farmers Market, which I think I last visited when I was about 12, and before returning to the aiport, the party was joined by a takeout pastrami sandwich from Canter's to keep me company during the traveling hours.
But there comes a time when one wants to get out of there, particularly if one does not wish to fly home on Sunday of Thanksgiving weekend. And so on Sunday afternoon as the con ended, I hiked over to the nearest car-rental facility and acquired a 24-hour vehicle (which I parked on a nearby street overnight, LA not having advanced so far as to ban overnight street parking).
But first I took the car downtown, had dinner on Olvera Street, and walked over to the Walt Disney Concert Hall to take in an organ recital. Not my favorite form of music-making, but it was what was on when I could get to it.
This was my first visit to the still newish hall. The first thing you notice inside is that the place is named to the gills. Shiny letters are affixed to the walls everywhere. You can walk up the Henry Mancini Staircase. The actual space where the music is played is not the Walt Disney Concert Hall at all, but the Ralphs/Food4Less Auditorium.
And no less startling than its name the auditorium is. Neither a shoebox nor an amphitheater, it's shaped rather like a crystal glass candy dish, except that it's made of wood. ("What also floats in water?") The performing space near the bottom is in the center, and the seating is on interlocking shell-like shapes that rise on all four sides. Fixed to what is almost arbitrarily the back wall is a huge bristling mass of metal and wooden quills sticking out in all directions, which has been likened to a bag of french fries. These are the organ pipes.
Seated at an electric console on stage, Thomas Trotter, official City Organist of Birmingham, England (I've met the Lord Mayor of Birmingham; now I've heard its City Organist), gave us a fluidly virtuosic performance of a program with the obligatory Bach, Buxtehude, and Durufle, plus a few more unusual items such as a florid 19th-century arrangement of Wagner's Rienzi Overture.
Monday I reverted to an old pastime of my 1980s trips to LA, and puttered amongst the used book and record stores of Hollywood and points south and west. Yes, some of them are still around. Lunch was at the Farmers Market, which I think I last visited when I was about 12, and before returning to the aiport, the party was joined by a takeout pastrami sandwich from Canter's to keep me company during the traveling hours.
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no subject
Date: 2007-11-27 04:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-11-27 04:49 pm (UTC)But that's not my favorite Bach composition. I'd much rather hear the "Little Fugue" in G-Minor.
no subject
Date: 2007-11-28 05:49 am (UTC)I'd certainly agree in putting it at or among the top of Bach's organ compositions, though my favorite Bach work of all is the Third Brandenburg.
The most recent previous organ recital I attended was in Boston in March. Same reason as this one: it was what was on when I could get to it.
no subject
Date: 2007-11-28 06:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-11-28 06:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-11-27 08:45 pm (UTC)Unfortunately, it was at a memorial service for a close friend who had been an organ technician.
no subject
Date: 2007-11-28 03:29 pm (UTC)The auditorium is pretty close to a shoebox, I think, in its proportions.