Tales #23-25

Sunday

I had a slow morning today, because it was Sunday, and I had a concert to go to at 3:00. I made myself a really good egg and cheese sandwich for breakfast, and then headed off to the Southbank Centre to see the Philharmonia Orchestra perform Edward Elgar's first symphony and Cockaigne Overture and Felix Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto. The Elgar overture was very, very English, which was exciting and cool. The violin concerto was boring, basically like a really poor copy of a classical piece in my opinion, despite the valiant attempts of the soloist and orchestra. The Elgar symphony was pretty, though certainly not life changing in any way... It was, if nothing else, a very welcome change from all of the atonal and modern music we've been attending of late.

Monday

Today, I also woke up a little late (still trying to recover from my cold), and then went over to the Barbican to go to the library and try to work something out with the record shop for the choir concert that we are putting on there. Oh, but before that, we made burritos that were, once again, absolutely amazing! This time, with guacamole!
Afterwards, I went to choir rehearsal, which completely exhausted my voice (Singing Beethoven is not easy!)

Tuesday

We had class pretty early this morning, due to some schedule swapping for later in the week. We talked about some very old theatrical traditions in our theatre class, which were quite surprising in how old and steady they were. One we learned about that was particularly interesting was: In one town in Scotland, a man has to cover himself from head to toe in burrs (he is called "Burry Man") once a year, and walk around for 9 hours, going around to pubs and factories, and he is only allowed to eat or drink whisky (which he must do through a straw)! http://193.62.154.38/celtica/Burryb.htm
After that, we had a guest lecture about composition by a British composer. He talked about composing for movies, which was interesting (though the music was unbearably cheesy, since it was from a movie!)
After this, we made some tortellini for dinner, and then went off to the Soho Theatre for a play called Midsummer. The play was very, very funny, with some very unique stylistic devices in how they told the story. It had a bit of a hollywood tinge to it (despite their best effort to claim otherwise!), but it was undoubtedly the most entertaining show I've seen so far.

Cheers,
Ethan