A Somewhat Stressful Sunday

This past Sunday was not exactly the calm, read the paper, take a walk followed by an afternoon nap kind of a day that some Sundays can be. It did start out with a short newspaper session but I gave up on that pretty quickly since all the news was either stupid, enraging, just plain bad, or some combination thereof. There was also a short walk but we cut it short due to CJ needing to catch a bus to Benaroya to give the Sunday Seattle Symphony pre-concert lecture in the late morning. After she left, I practiced some of the more challenging sections of Tchaikovsky's String Serenade which I would be playing in the afternoon with Philharmonia Northwest. It is a spectacularly lush piece with lots of juicy bass parts, so I wanted to get it right. Eventually, I had lunch and got ready to go pick up Mom who was going to the concert with us.

That's when the fun began. The drive to Bothell was uneventful, and we set off for Seattle to pick up CJ at 1:30 with the idea that we could easily make it from Downtown to Laurelhurst by 2:00, which is when orchestra members are supposed to arrive for the 2:30 concert. South on 405 went well, 520 was wide open as it should be on a Sunday afternoon, and it was full speed ahead onto I5 southbound. Glancing over at the northbound lanes, we noticed they were pretty much stalled which did not bode well for getting up to Laurelhurst in a timely manner. Shifting my gaze back to the car in front of me, I realized that IT WAS STOPPED and there was NO WAY I was going to stop in time to avoid rearending it! I instinctively slammed on the brakes and moved to the right into the Mercer Street exit only lane. Luckily that lane was nearly empty and disaster was averted, but an incident like that can put you in a seriously jangled state of mind.

We made it to Benaroya without further incident other than a pounding heart and a bit of mental anguish. The CJ pickup plan outside Benaroya worked perfectly and I decided to avoid the freeway mess and take surface streets for the rest of the journey. However, to my horror, Broad was closed off just before it dives under 99 and we were forced into a long detour with lots of red lights, elderly men driving Lincolns very slowly, and other inconveniences which now seemed personally directed at ME.

Finally, we made it to the Philharmonia venue only a few minutes later than I had hoped. The concert went off quite well, no thanks to certain concentration issues of mine due to the preceding traffic-related awfulness. We had a wonderful soloist, baritone Barry Johnson, who filled in for the suddenly sickly Charles Stephens and did a great job on the Vaughn Williams piece Five Mystical Songs. The Respighi piece sounded good and the Tchaikovsky was as wonderful as could be hoped for. This was our second and last concert of the season conducted by Adam Stern who is totally, totally great. Also, he loves us which is very flattering.

We are auditioning our other three finalists for the permanent position during the next three concerts. Next up is Joseph Pollard White.

Oh, and if you are wondering why such prestigious people are interested in our conductor/music director position (which pays abysmally), it is because although not professionals, we are GOOD.