John and I spent the weekend in Delaware... To be more exact, in DoubleTree Hotel in Wilmington. John is apprenticing with a famous German bow-maker, Mr. Joe Regh, and he and his wife are vice president and president of VSA (Violin Society of America). We travelled to Wilmington to attend the VSA 2007 convention (held annually since 1974). There were seminars on violin-making, commercial exhibits where you could buy violin [or viola/cello]-making stuff from vendors from around the world.
This was the first time John and I were in a VSA convention. The people there were so friendly, and since they were all into arts, we had a lot in common. We also went to two concerts, one was David Bromberg and his Big Band's performance which was held in Grand Opera House and was truly spirit-lifting. This guy is a genius entertainer and if you want to laugh a lot and enjoy the music too, just go to his shows! Interestingly enough, he also has a very rare collection of fine violins that everybody in the seminars referred to. We got to see very beautiful pictures of some of those violins, but unfortunately we couldn't make it seeing the real collection.
The next concert included violin/piano pieces performed by Robert McDuffie and Charles Abramovic . As a classical-music fan, I totally enjoyed the smart selection and the brilliant performance of these two guys. An unforgettable evening it was.
After the VSA banquet on Saturday night (Nov. 3) John and I decided not to wait for the next morningand leave for home right away, so that we could have more time to rest on Sunday. On our way back, John started explaining to me that I should not pronounce the words "student" or "script" as "estudent" or "escript", or the words "wall" and "water" as "vall" and "vater", one exception, however, was German names, like "Weiss" (his favorite composer) or "Wolfgang". Those names were supposed to be pronounced as "Veiss" or "Volfgang". Then in the middle of all this, I heard John shouting, "DAMN! WE MISSED THE GARDEN STATE!" and well... after missing the right exit, we ended up in Manhattan and got stuck in the crazy traffic there for ever. We arrived home 2: 24 am, old time.
(The enigmatic picture you see here is not a work of Modern or Postmodern Arts, rather, it is Manhattan's lights in motion! I took this picture as I was sitting in the car -- bored.)
2 comments:
Hi,
Thanks for your comments in my blog.
I'm glad you like those songs (which surprised me according to your age).
Do you know....
"Mo Li Hua"--when Puccini adopted it in his opera "Turandot"...The background was Peking (now Beijing),China, it actually had a Persian flavor and historical background!
Turandot (Turandokht) was taken from the Persian collection of stories called "The Book of One Thousand and One Days."
In Persian, the fairy tale is known as "Turandokht", with "dokht" being a contraction for "Dokhtar"(meaning
"Daughter").
The opera took place in Peking, China where the character of "Turandokht" was a cold Chinese princess.
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WOW thank you for the explanation. I'm surprised that you know all this about Persian tales and language... I will join you at "MyBlogLog"!
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