found: one phone, one string quartet
Apr. 17th, 2010 09:08 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
calimacEager readers will recall that, well over a month ago, my cell phone went missing and eventually I replaced it.
Yesterday, I got it back. It had been found exactly where I first guessed it had fallen out of my pocket - in the Stanford music department's small recital hall - and turned in to the department office a couple days earlier.
Two things make this mysterious. First, I had gone back, after realizing the phone was missing (a day or two after it happened), and searched the area of the hall where I'd been sitting, without luck. Second, why had it taken so long to be found? The seating area in this hall doesn't have nooks and crannies where fallen items could lay long unseen.
One possibility is that it had been found before I went looking for it, but not turned in for a long time. But if so, why? A Stanford student would be unlikely to be interested in appropriating my very low-end phone with no gadgets, and in any case my account shows that nobody used it before I had the SIM disconnected.
How I learned it'd been found is quaint in itself. The office turned it on, looked at the contact list, and called the first number alphabetically listed. This is labeled "B cell" and is, indeed, B's cell phone. The second number is labeled "Home", which is what I'd try first if I found a lost cell phone and, undertaking to contact the owner myself, found such a listing in its directory. But they didn't do that.
This, I think, illustrates the virtues of keeping your contact list short. B was puzzled enough on receiving a call on her cell phone, which she uses almost only for work, from the Stanford music department. Imagine how much worse it'd be if they'd called my brother in Pittsburgh, or the insurance adjuster who dealt with my car accident, both of whom have been at the top of my contact list at times when I needed them there, but were deleted after the need to be able to reach them immediately on my cell phone diminished and I wanted to unclog the list.
After picking up the prodigal phone, I returned to the same recital hall (making sure afterwards that I still had both phones) for a short free concert by another one of those visiting Canadian ensembles, the Cecilia String Quartet. Four very tall and thin young women in basic black blouses and slacks. The cellist looks rather like Hannah Addario-Berry, but I was otherwise strongly disreminded of the Del Sol Quartet. This group has a clear organ-like ensemble sound, and while some of their interpretive choices for tempi and pauses were odd, their control of pulse and rhythm was exemplary. They shone in a new piece, Open by Belinda Reynolds. I'd heard Reynolds' music before without a strong reaction, but I'm sold on her based on this. She is a true postminimalist, casting canonic melodic lines over additive cellular rhythms, all beautifully consonant without lushness, and delivered with a sure-footedness that would have convinced me by ear alone that this wasn't Del Sol. Beethoven's Op. 127 emerged with equally gorgeous tones, but these players need more seasoning to put real soul and coherent shape into challenging music like a large Beethoven slow movement.
There were a couple small children in the audience. I'm not sure why; string quartet recitals are not generally considered children's concerts, and Op. 127 is emphatically not a beginner's piece. One tiny girl probably has begun musical training; she seemed fairly attentive as she stood in the aisle by her mother's chair, and began hopping in place to the rhythm of Beethoven's scherzo. A slightly older boy seated a couple rows in front of me, however, was clearly bored. He occupied himself for a while by turning around and looking at the people behind - I gave him a nod and a smile - but eventually had to be distracted by reading a newspaper sports section.
Yesterday, I got it back. It had been found exactly where I first guessed it had fallen out of my pocket - in the Stanford music department's small recital hall - and turned in to the department office a couple days earlier.
Two things make this mysterious. First, I had gone back, after realizing the phone was missing (a day or two after it happened), and searched the area of the hall where I'd been sitting, without luck. Second, why had it taken so long to be found? The seating area in this hall doesn't have nooks and crannies where fallen items could lay long unseen.
One possibility is that it had been found before I went looking for it, but not turned in for a long time. But if so, why? A Stanford student would be unlikely to be interested in appropriating my very low-end phone with no gadgets, and in any case my account shows that nobody used it before I had the SIM disconnected.
How I learned it'd been found is quaint in itself. The office turned it on, looked at the contact list, and called the first number alphabetically listed. This is labeled "B cell" and is, indeed, B's cell phone. The second number is labeled "Home", which is what I'd try first if I found a lost cell phone and, undertaking to contact the owner myself, found such a listing in its directory. But they didn't do that.
This, I think, illustrates the virtues of keeping your contact list short. B was puzzled enough on receiving a call on her cell phone, which she uses almost only for work, from the Stanford music department. Imagine how much worse it'd be if they'd called my brother in Pittsburgh, or the insurance adjuster who dealt with my car accident, both of whom have been at the top of my contact list at times when I needed them there, but were deleted after the need to be able to reach them immediately on my cell phone diminished and I wanted to unclog the list.
After picking up the prodigal phone, I returned to the same recital hall (making sure afterwards that I still had both phones) for a short free concert by another one of those visiting Canadian ensembles, the Cecilia String Quartet. Four very tall and thin young women in basic black blouses and slacks. The cellist looks rather like Hannah Addario-Berry, but I was otherwise strongly disreminded of the Del Sol Quartet. This group has a clear organ-like ensemble sound, and while some of their interpretive choices for tempi and pauses were odd, their control of pulse and rhythm was exemplary. They shone in a new piece, Open by Belinda Reynolds. I'd heard Reynolds' music before without a strong reaction, but I'm sold on her based on this. She is a true postminimalist, casting canonic melodic lines over additive cellular rhythms, all beautifully consonant without lushness, and delivered with a sure-footedness that would have convinced me by ear alone that this wasn't Del Sol. Beethoven's Op. 127 emerged with equally gorgeous tones, but these players need more seasoning to put real soul and coherent shape into challenging music like a large Beethoven slow movement.
There were a couple small children in the audience. I'm not sure why; string quartet recitals are not generally considered children's concerts, and Op. 127 is emphatically not a beginner's piece. One tiny girl probably has begun musical training; she seemed fairly attentive as she stood in the aisle by her mother's chair, and began hopping in place to the rhythm of Beethoven's scherzo. A slightly older boy seated a couple rows in front of me, however, was clearly bored. He occupied himself for a while by turning around and looking at the people behind - I gave him a nod and a smile - but eventually had to be distracted by reading a newspaper sports section.
