The Philadelphia Orchestra

I said yesterday that I was going to share about treasure hunting with my Mom over Memorial Day weekend, but I'm actually going to postpone that until Monday.

Instead I'm going to share about an adventure I had last night with my sister...

Hubs dropped me off at the Metro after work. I got on and sat down and right as the train door was closing up, a woman tried to jump in and got stuck in the doors. It was her own fault, but it still freaked everyone out.

The rest of the ride was fairly peaceful and soon I arrived at Foggy Bottom. I came up from underground and found my sister sitting on a bench finishing up a Sudoku puzzle. We still had plenty of time (like two hours) before the main event and so I sat down beside her to people watch. Then the people to watch became sparse, so she let me read an (I know it's not a vowel coming up, but it just sounds better) X-Men comic she had. Have you ever tried to read a comic book? This one jumped all over the place and after a full day of work, my brain resisted trying to keep up. So I just looked at the pictures and read a text bubble every now and then.

After a little while it started to sprinkle (this word seems funny and out of context here, but I hope you know what I mean), so we walked over and hopped on the Kennedy Center Shuttle. A bunch of white haired folk were in there and they kind of stared at us like we weren't supposed to be there. I hope they were just thinking, "It sure is good to see some young folk who appreciate the finer things in life instead of all that screaming and bee bopping music of today."

When we got to the Kennedy Center, it was still only sprinkling, but a large cloud was looming and an occasional lightning bolt struck through the air.

Eventually the wind picked up and it started to do more than sprinkle, so we went inside and wandered around. Our tour included the gift shop where we laughed at a book about dancing with your cats.

We walked back towards the entrance to the performance hall and wondered whether the woman would check our purses and take away sister's brownie and my granola bars. Because the sign said food and drink are prohibited, we wandered outside to hide our goods. The brownie and one granola bar ended up in a newspaper tucked inside sister's purse and when we began to think about what we were doing it made us laugh some more.

She never did check our bags.

About twenty-five minutes before the show we made our way through the line and into the performance hall. Our seats were further back this time (than for The Chieftans), but more in the center while still being far enough left to see the pianist's hands. Please be kind about this picture- my phone is not exactly a high quality picture taking machine. Plus, my sister told me the ushers were trained assassins sworn to defend against picture taking and that I'd better stop it before they caught me.

As you may have guessed by the title of this post, the "main event" of the evening was a performance by The Philadelphia Orchestra. In the "warm up" and during the beginning, it almost brought me to tears. I'm so thankful for new experiences and this was a grand one.

During the first half of the performance, Jean-Yves Thibaudet played the piano. He was the soloist on the award winning and nominated soundtracks of Atonement and Pride and Prejudice. His job is pretty much my sister's dream job.

The first concerto was written for the left hand and so, of course, he played it all with his left hand. The second song (yeah yeah, whatever) was my favorite and at one point I swear his hands looked blurry he was playing so fast.

When we came back from intermission, the piano was gone. The main man became the conductor, whose name was Charles Dutoit. I found him incredibly entertaining. I guess I've never watched a performance where the conductor was front and center, but it looked like he was having himself a little dance party and I really enjoyed watching him.

On the Metro ride back, sister played me a bit of the Pride and Prejudice soundtrack on her iPod and said, "That's him." She also played a random bunch of songs that kept me entertained for most of the ride- from "Grease Lightning" to songs from Rocky Horror Picture Show to "The Saints Go Marching In" by Louis Armstrong.

I am so thankful for a great night with my sister, not to mention proud of her for her success in becoming a part of an industry that gives out comp tickets for amazing performances. She's moving to Philly in July for an apprenticeship at another theatre and I look forward to seeing what adventures we get into back in the City of Brotherly... or rather Sisterly... Love.

Blessings and Happy Thursday!