The Conductors Language

Last night I went to the Utah Symphony with my roommate. I have been to the performances of my college symphony, but I haven't been to a professional symphony before. I enjoyed myself immensely. It was held in Abravanel Hall. The crystals on the large crystal chandeliers captured the light and refracted tiny rainbows over our heads. The musicians all in black and white formally sat on the stage. On the right side, three rows back a violinist pinned a small purple clip to her hair. The small splash of color kept drawing my eye, as if she was saying, "I'm here too even thought I'm in the third row. I want you to see me."
My favorite part of the evening was watching the conductor. The language of conducting is a mystery to me. Sometimes I can match the movement of the conductors arms with the resulting music, but most of the time I'm baffled by it. Like all communication you have the ones conveying the message and the listeners responding. In this case the conductor commands  with his baton and the musicians respond by increasing or decreasing tempo as well as other commands. Thierry Fischer conducted last nights performance. He has guest conducted for orchestras and philharmonics all over the world. He began performing as Principal Flute at the Zurich Opera in Hamburg.Through out the years has played and conducted all over the world. The Utah Symphony is privileged to have Fischer as a conductor for the last two years.
I have seen a variety of conductors and to me most of them look like they are waving their arms around. Fischer on the other hand looked like he was performing magic. His movements were crisp sometimes slashing other times jabbing. To slow down or soften the music he employed delicate intricate flourishes with his baton. My favorite movement, which I still don't know what it signaled, was when he pointed his baton towards the ground and pointed down with the other hand as well. He thrust his arms up and down, almost like he was dancing. His whole body held rigid and from his profile all the muscles in his face clenched tight in concentration. Instead of birds fluttering out of his baton or sparks of light; music, purposeful and obedient jumped, sang and mourned following his baton. In a language that most of the audience doesn't understand Thierry Fischer directed the symphony to spill forth music that anyone can interpret and understand, making black note figures translate into grace and beauty.

Old McDonald Had a Farm

I made a trip to Western New York and had the opportunity to visit a good friend of mine. She and I were roommates our Junior and Senior years in college. After college I moved across the country and she stayed at home and began working as an accountant. Since college she has become my travel buddy and we have met in Vietnam and Costa Rica. This time around I got to spend the night with her at her aunts house. We spent the afternoon and evening catching up and eating. On Saturday morning I woke up at 8 and walked over to their barn to witness milking of the cows. I surprised my friend, Aimee, and her dad as they didn't expect me to actually make it out of bed yet. I arrived just in time for milking the final round of cows. I put on a too large pair of rubber boots and walked out on the milking floor. Aimee handed me a bottle of iodine and told me to sterilize one of the cows teats. I crouched by my cow and dipped her and then used a towel to clean off the iodine.

She then showed me how to milk by hand. It really isn't so difficult. You don't pull, it's more of a squeeze. When we go swimming my dad is fond of bringing out his friend Charlie. You see Charlie is a clam and he squirts water at people. I eventually learned how to introduce Charlie to others, all you do is close your pinkie first followed by the rest of your fingers and the water squirts up into someones place. Milking a cow is just the same except you do it in reverse. Then you attach the milkers which are like four mini vacuums and the machine does all the work. When we finished with the cows we cleaned the milkers and moved on to caring for the calves.

I scooped poopy straw with a pitchfork and threw it out the small window. Then I put out new straw and helped feed the calves. We cleaned up the barn and then headed back to the house to clean up ourselves. I really enjoyed learning a little bit about cows and seeing how many people live.