HONEY BEARS

I've got some nice springtime shots in the botanical I haven't posted but I could use some new material. This wall painting faces a parking lot in the Grand Centre (they use the British spelling) arts district. The figure is a squeezable container in which honey is commonly sold here. Why pick that? I get the reference to the visual arts and the symphony hall is nearby. However, the arena where the beloved hockey team plays is two or three miles away and I don't get the top hat at all. It's not like we have a lot of white tie events and such plutocrats as we got are much more discrete.          

AND ON A DIFFERENT NOTE

The restaurant and nightclub Jazz St. Louis is just over a block from the symphony hall. It's hung in there for a long time. I'm not a big jazz fan. I loved Dave Brubeck when I was in my teens but he and his quartet were experimenting with unusual time signatures and making it work, notably the famous Take Five. (Even the Grateful Dead had an extended number in 11/4). I admire the beauty and occasional fierceness of John Coltrane and Miles Davis. However, the near-constant rigidity of 4/4 time and the variations on a theme format fail to pull me in. I end up back with the symphony.  

There's an event to mark tomorrow.         

SLSO

We are fortunate to have a top-tier symphony orchestra in a medium size city. It is the second oldest in the country after New York. Mrs. C and I have been subscribers for more than 40 years. I took her here on our first date (Mahler 1st, Walter Susskind conducting, but I don't remember what she wore). She probably wondered what she was getting herself into. 

We love our new music director, Stéphane Denève. I don't know how these conductors juggle two jobs but he still has his old one as music director in Brussels, plus being principal guest conductor of the Philadelphia Orchestra. His much admired predecessor, David Robertson, was simultaneously music director in Sydney during his last few years here. A lot of airplane time.         

Join The Triumph Of The Skies

Okay, my bad. Now it's stuck in your head like mine. This is a restaurant in the Grand Centre arts district. I'd write more but Madeleine is over this evening and she's crawling all over me while I try to compose this. She wins.