mushin no shin

Wow. It’s official. The Schermerhorn is open!

Last night I had the pleasure of attending a “preview concert”, essentially a dress rehearsal for Saturday’s gala. And - wow. I never imagined the acoustics could be all they’ve been hyped to be. But they are. I mean you could hear fret & reed noise in places. As if to illustrate the contrast, they played selections from a Mahler piece which they performed in full back in April, and while the performance was great both times, the depth of sound here vs TPAC was almost unreal. “Thunder percussion” washed across us like a tidal wave. Strategic placement of brass players in the rear created moments of quadrophonia.

Architecturally the place is magnificent as well. “Awesome” in it’s non-colloquial usage, as in “deserving of awe”. Solmen, beautiful — truly a cathedral for the religion that is great music.

It has been said that our new symphony center rivals — if not surpasses — the legendary Carnegie Hall. From what I have seen and heard I could certainly believe it.

Turning from the hall to the music, the program also includes a world-premiere of an original piece commissioned for the symphony — a one of a kind piece, the “Triple Concerto for Banjo, Double Bass, and Tabla”, composed by and featuring Bela Fleck on the banjo, Zakir Hussain on the tabla, and Edgar Meyer on the double bass. Not only was it a unique & beautiful piece, it was fortuitously timed for my experience, being that I’ve actually been on an Indian kirtan kick the last few weeks, so the tabla was already holding a prominent place in my consciousness.

(On a side note, I would be remiss not to add that my evening was greatly enhanced by some wonderful company. And speaking of the tabla, isn’t it amazing how well that tied to everything given our talk about interconnectedness? It was all I could do not to jump up and sing “Hare Krishna” myself : )

So then moving on to this morning, we had the formal ribbon cutting ceremony, enjoyed by myself and approximately 2700 other Nashvillians. Speeches from Mayor Purcell, Cal Turner, and others were interspersed with Chinese Lion Dancing, and finally followed by the cutting itself and a hellicopter flyover, after which we took a walk through the center and out into the courtyard for a bite to eat. A glorious morning for Nashville for which I was happy just to be a witness.

It’s times like this morning that I really wish I had a camera. In fact I think I may have to buy one in order to bring you part two of this piece. Meanwhile this scan of the invitation will have to suffice.

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 7th, 2006 at 12:31 pm and is filed under Babble, Music. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.