concert review: Silicon Valley Music Festival

Wednesday: To Le Petit Trianon to review some other concert. Find the place locked and deserted. Puzzling. Am I at the wrong place, or time? Phone B., ask her to check the websites of the venue and ensemble. Find that the concert was cancelled due to illness. Well, they could have put up a sign. Go home, find an e-mail to that effect, except that it wasn't forwarded to me until 90 minutes before showtime, which is too late.

Friday: Back to Le Petit Trianon for a concert from the Silicon Valley Music Festival. It's there; the only problem is that hardly anybody else is: this is not an event that's yet learned to publicize itself much. Greeted warmly by festival executive director and artistic director. They and the artists pretend not to notice that the fine show they're putting on is being heard by a lot of empty seats.

Saturday: Although I'd only been set to review Friday's, I decide to return for the next concert. Cripes, the Trianon is locked again. Check SVMF program book: oh, this one's at another venue; my bad. I have 15 minutes to drive across downtown, find a parking space, and get there. Succeed. Executive director looks astonished that I've returned as I'd said I would. Tiny ex-warehouse space, about the size that would fill up with the audience from Friday's concert. About filled up. Much more appropriate acoustics for a postmodern vocal concert.

Sunday: Finish up review of the lot.

Frank M. Robinson, 1926-2014

The most versatile thing Frank M. Robinson ever did for me was to recite a litany of all the complaints that editors have about writers. I must have looked skeptical, because then he turned around and gave an equally lengthy and convincing litany of all the complaints that writers have about editors. Honestly, he could have been a lawyer.

Instead, he was both a writer and an editor, and good at both, as well as being one of the most colorful and senior and wise old heads around the Bay Area SF fannish community in the 1970s.

All that time, he was something else as well, and I may best convey that by repeating what I wrote when reviewing the film of Harvey Milk:

In just about every scene of Milk and his supporters sitting around having a political confab, there's an old man with a hat like mine. He was there at the time in real life (rather younger, of course). I know that man; I first met him just about the time these events took place. His name is Frank M. Robinson, and he helped write that great speech of Harvey's, the one where he reminds the bigots that America stands for freedom, and cleverly, wickedly concludes: "Love it or leave it." Here is what Frank has to say about himself and Harvey Milk. And here he tells about his part in making the film. Good going, Frank.