Weekend activities
May. 2nd, 2004 10:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
calimacFriday, a concert by the New Century Chamber Orchestra, a small ensemble of string players who perform standing up (except for the cellists). They're notable for a meltingly smooth sound, inherited from their now-retired founder, Stuart Canin (once concertmaster of the San Francisco Symphony, and father of the author Ethan Canin), which worked fine on the first two pieces, a Mendelssohn string symphony and Grieg's Holberg Suite. (Note to Buffy fans: the Holberg is the music playing on Giles's car radio when Dawn is trying to change the station in "Real Me".) But it might not be the best approach to a spiky piece like Shostakovich's Concerto for Piano, Trumpet, and String Orchestra (also known as his Piano Concerto No. 1). Maybe that's why it sounded a bit wan.
Saturday, a concert by Brocelïande, a local folk-cum-medieval/Renaissance quartet I really like and have followed over the years. They sing, and play a vast variety of instruments. A fair number of spring songs, it being May Day. They're working on their third seasonal album: having already done Winter and Spring, their next will be Autumn, and it's expected out by this year's. I'm looking forward to it: as performers they are just getting better.
Both concerts were in churches in Palo Alto. The NCCO in their usual venue, the First Methodist, a structure that resembles an artist's impression of the inside of an Egyptian pyramid; Brocelïande in the Covenant Presbyterian, a wood-panelled item in perfect post-WW2 Prairie Monumental. If Joseph Eichler had built a church, it'd look like this. For all I know, maybe he did. Both have great acoustics, though, so I shouldn't complain.
Sunday, I followed a reference in Ansible and took a look at the OED's Science Fiction citation page, which I'd only glanced at once before. What ho, they were looking for usages of the term "high fantasy" prior to 1980. Didn't Boyer and Zahorski's first Fantastic Imagination anthology, that popularized the term, come out in 1977? It did. So I sent it in and they've posted it. My tiny contribution to lexicography. Take a look yourself, and see what you know.
Also done this weekend, but not by me: a Corflu web page placeholder-style, courtesy of the blue-haired![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
athenais. We're getting there.
Saturday, a concert by Brocelïande, a local folk-cum-medieval/Renaissance quartet I really like and have followed over the years. They sing, and play a vast variety of instruments. A fair number of spring songs, it being May Day. They're working on their third seasonal album: having already done Winter and Spring, their next will be Autumn, and it's expected out by this year's. I'm looking forward to it: as performers they are just getting better.
Both concerts were in churches in Palo Alto. The NCCO in their usual venue, the First Methodist, a structure that resembles an artist's impression of the inside of an Egyptian pyramid; Brocelïande in the Covenant Presbyterian, a wood-panelled item in perfect post-WW2 Prairie Monumental. If Joseph Eichler had built a church, it'd look like this. For all I know, maybe he did. Both have great acoustics, though, so I shouldn't complain.
Sunday, I followed a reference in Ansible and took a look at the OED's Science Fiction citation page, which I'd only glanced at once before. What ho, they were looking for usages of the term "high fantasy" prior to 1980. Didn't Boyer and Zahorski's first Fantastic Imagination anthology, that popularized the term, come out in 1977? It did. So I sent it in and they've posted it. My tiny contribution to lexicography. Take a look yourself, and see what you know.
Also done this weekend, but not by me: a Corflu web page placeholder-style, courtesy of the blue-haired
athenais. We're getting there.
