What an exciting few days that are coming up! Just as I spent election day taking music comps, I'll spend the inauguration practicing and helping out at the first day of Music Appreeshe (tomorrow morning at 9:30). It's very exciting to see all the pageantry, and healthy to indulge in some positive musical nationalism.
(I was, after all, born in the San Diego Naval Hospital. I went to so many Navy Band concerts in my infancy that I can still remember the physical "feeling" of the band and the first time I thought about how it different from my dad's LPs--the band could literally put a tingle in my fingers, and the record only shook the floor a little bit. I will try to dig up the large photo of me that was in the San Diego Union-Tribune when I was a toddler of me trying to play a french horn under the caption "Tiny Tootler." Actually, it was either the San Diego Union or the Evening Tribune. Anyone care to find it for me? Anyway, you develop a prenatal tolerance for cheesy patriotic medleys--trust me.)
I was busy all Sunday--practicing, church rehearsal, quintet rehearsal, watching the Steelers win--and missed Tom Hanks' narration of Copland's "Lincoln Portrait." Then someone showed me this link, of Senator Obama with the Chicago Symphony. Via therestisnoise, CSO guest conductor William Eddins describes the experience of conducting Obama.
which made me think of this classic parody:
Ha! I used to be kind of cool to PDQ Bach, but I don't know--if Copland's not too cheesy for me (let alone patriotic medleys), why should PDQ Bach be?
So, happy inauguration! I still can't quite believe it's going to happen. I mean, the GOP only has 12 hours to release its Michelle-Obama's-secret-'whitey'-rant-tape, or the Kenyan embassy will find the mythic foreign birth certificate.
Whatever. It's an exciting time, an I-remember-where-I-was kind of moment. And I'm pretty sure I'll tell my grandkids:
"Oh, I remember. I was frantically rebuffering a faulty CNN live feed from a distant wireless signal inside of a practice module within a temporary classroom facility in the state that started it all."
