Here’s a clue from the Saturday USA Today crossword puzzle for you to noodle on: “Beethoven’s homage to Napoleon”. I’ll give you a few minutes to ponder this one and then we’ll come back to it.
Some good news on the Nils Lofgren front. I wrote last week that his guitars had been stolen prior to the show that we saw at the Kessler. Fortunately Dallas Police were able to make an arrest and return the 4 stolen guitars to Nils:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/music/news/police-recover-nils-lofgrens-stolen-guitars-worth-over-2410k/ar-AAvnZrM
Tuesday took me back to cold, windy and rainy New York. The main reason for the trip was a visit to the Microsoft office at Times Square and so I stayed in the Sanctuary hotel on 47th street that I enjoyed on my last visit to the area. For Tuesday dinner I tried a small Belgian restaurant that my boss had recommended – BXL just off Times Square on 43rd street. They specialize in moules frites with 12 different sauces. I stuck with the classic mariniere sauce and could only finish about half of the 2lb serving.
After dinner I went for a walk down 6th Avenue to 34th street. Misty rain was falling which provided me this eerie looking view of the Empire State building just visible above Bryant Park and another clearer view from just across the street.
On the walk back to the hotel I saw some potential piano upgrades (kidding – that would be a huge waste of money) and a store that made me chuckle. One of the great features of New York is how easy it is to walk around and find interesting sights.
After work at the Microsoft office, I walked up to 62nd street to Lincoln Center to see the New York Philharmonic performing at David Geffen Hall. The ballet, opera, and orchestra all have their own custom buildings on 3 sides of the plaza at Lincoln Center.
I had dinner in the “Kitchen” at Geffen Hall – a delicious scallop dish with roasted cauliflower, raisins, and nuts and then took my seat for the performance.
The first piece on the program was a world premiere of “Metacosmos” by Anna Thorvaldsdottir from Iceland. The conductor, Esa-Pekka Salonen, did a brief interview with Anna about the commissioned piece which she described as “finding the beauty in chaos”. In the 12 minutes I heard about 11 minutes of chaos and 1 minute of beauty.
Next was Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 3 performed by the 25 year old English pianist Benjamin Grosvenor who first performed in a fish and chip shop by the seaside and won the BBC Young Musician competition at age 11. I loved the precision of the string section in this piece – absolute unison from lead violin through double bass in the very quiet pizzicato sections. Grosvenor shone brightest in the cadenza at the end of the first movement which I found very creative. Here’s Glen Gould performing the same piece:
The final piece of the evening was Beethoven’s Symphony No. 3. Back to that crossword clue – did you figure it out? The answer is “Eroica”, the name Beethoven ultimately gave to the symphony. I take umbrage with the clue as the Playbill for the concert says that Beethoven says of Napoleon after he declared himself Emperor, “Is even he nothing but an ordinary man! Now he will also trample upon human rights and become a slave to his own ambition; now he will set himself above all other men and become a tyrant”. He went to the table, grabbed the top of the title page of the score and tore it in half. The first page was rewritten and the symphony was given the name Sinfonia eroica. The symphony was very familiar to me as I heard my Mum play it in our home many times growing up.
Thursday night was jazz night. I took the subway down to the West Village and caught the early set at Small’s jazz club. This is an aptly named tiny cellar club where the first few rows of seats are right on stage with the band. The first show was a sextet with tenor and alto saxes, piano, guitar, drums and bass and fully occupied the small stage. I appreciated the mirrors angled above the piano and drums that let you see exactly what the musicians were up to.
The menu at Bobo restaurant next to Small’s looked good and so I stopped in for dinner. The food more than lived up to the promise of the menu and I enjoyed an absolutely delicious steak tartare with shoestring fries and a mushroom tart that was perfectly executed.
The admission ticket to Small’s also provides entry to the Mezzrow cellar jazz club across the street and so I decided to stop in for a short visit after dinner. Monte Croft was performing on the vibraphone and is a real master. The sound in Mezzrow is really great from such a small venue. Here’s a short video of the vibraphone mastery:
Friday was another cold, windy and rainy day as I made my way to the airport to travel home. The 80 degree temperature on arrival at DFW was a pleasant change. Diana and I went to Keeper seafood restaurant for an early dinner as storms were forecast later in the evening and enjoyed their excellent calamari and lobster mac ‘n cheese. We thought we left time to get home before the storm but were mistaken. I navigated Penelope south from McKinney to avoid the tornado sirens, thunderstorms and potential hail. We stopped for coffee and thought it was safe to head home. Wrong – we drove right into a hail storm and had to make a quick U-turn to make sure Penelope didn’t get dented up – she took cover under an awning in front of a building and made it home unscathed.
After our workout and crossword on Saturday, we stopped into Starbucks to visit Alicia. It’s good to see how pleasant she is to everyone (even Mom) when working the register.
Dinner on Saturday night was at the Wahbas. We got to meet Patty’s sister and her family, enjoy amazing Brent smoked meats, and enjoy a variety of live performances in Brent’s music room – so much talent in the house that night.
My main book this week was “The Names” by Don DeLillo. This was recommended by Suzy Hansen in her book that I finished last week as a good tour of expat life in Greece. I read DeLillo’s most famous novel,”White Noise”, a few years ago and was disappointed but decided to give him another try with “The Names”. Portions of the book were compelling and enjoyable but the deep discussion on the origins of alphabets and language were too involved for my taste.
Here’s the Wikipedia summary: “The work, set mostly in Greece, is primarily a series of character studies, interwoven with a plot about a mysterious “language cult” that is behind a number of unexplained murders. Among the many themes explored throughout the work is the intersection of language and culture, the perception of American culture from both within and outside its borders, and the impact that narration has on the facts of a story.”
I picked up “Every Note Played” by Lisa Genova (a Harvard PhD 
neuroscientist) during my walk around New York on Tuesday night and it proved to have some unexpected links to my week. Genova is best known for writing “Still Alice” that became the basis for a popular movie about a lady suffering with Alzheimer’s. “Every Note Played” is about a concert pianist who is stricken with ALS and quickly loses control of his arms. In one early section the pianist talks about how much he enjoys the cadenza in Beethoven’s third piano concerto (the one I heard on Wednesday night) and in another section his ex-wife talks about regretting having given up her career as a jazz pianist and particularly playing at Small’s (the club I visited on Thursday night). Strange coincidences.
I heard a song by The Gaddabouts on Spotify Discover Weekly and enjoyed it very much. Turns out the Gaddabouts is Edie Brickell (of the New Bohemians and seen at the Oak Cliff Music Festival), Steve Gadd (superstar session drummer seen with James Taylor recently), Pino Palladino (one of my favourite jazzy bass players), and Andy Fairweather Low (seen with Eric Clapton at New Orleans jazzfest and a relative of my Mum). I’m looking forward to listening to the rest of the album this week.