It's next Saturday. Maybe I'd learn something "new".

Jeremy, or could it be that you will learn something "old".

Wally

And maybe something borrowed and blue as well.

Thought you were married already

My whole career is about learning something new from something old.

Definitely go! And report back!

I wish I could go.

As long as you think you can learn from someone else, you're not going to grow old, or stale as a player.

I'd go.

Definitely go.

Yes, and then tell us all about it. Sounds interesting indeed.

Aye.

Hold out for some Johannes Matthias Sperger, Domenico Dragonetti and Giovanni Bottesini for some 18th-19th century fireworks.

I recently had to pass up a gig with a pro chamber ensemble doing forgotten works. If I have the option, I'll never pass up an opportunity to play or listen to a concert like that again after hearing my friend's report (I passed it on to him).

Hope it's as enjoyable as it sounds.

My wife and I went to the concert last night. We enjoyed it very much. The players were very good and it was a kind of music I was not really very familiar with: late 17th century music written at the end of the Renaissance and the beginning of the Baroque period.

All the pieces were based on ostinatos (repeating bass lines) over repeating chord changes. That part would be familiar to all of us. Many pieces had similar progressions: Am G F E and we've all played songs like that. The harpsichord player was reading from chord changes (which in that style is called figured bass) and was improvising his part.

Since this music came from the days before the invention of classical harmony as we know it now, the pieces were not really based on chords but rather on simultaneously moving melody lines. It's hard for us to hear that nowadays and not hear the chord (at least it's hard for me) and some of the implied chords were pretty wild.

The leader of the group played the dulcian which is a precursor of the bassoon and was a virtuoso (the two violinists who played three hundred year old instruments with gut strings and the harpsichordist were not too shabby either). The leader was also a musicologist and gave lots of explanations and answered all my questions with great charm and knowledge.

My wife and I, both in our 60's, were the youngest ones at the concert. Of course, Wilco was playing a few blocks away, so maybe that's where the younger generations went.

I suspect a rhetorical question but you should tell us what, having been there, it was like.

Sounds like time well spent! Bravo!

Didn't he just do that?

Don't confuse us with the facts, davio!

Listen for yourself.
link to mp3

THat was some beautiful music, thanks.

Don't know how I missed that.