I was tagged by LB at 3 Ring Binder to post six things people don't know about me, and man, this is difficult. I consider myself a reserved person, so one would think there is a lot about me that people don't know. Maybe I'm just boring??? Sad, but possibly true.
Let's see--
1. My elementary school teachers thought I would grow up to be an artist (as in paint, pencil, paper, etc.).
2. One of my celebrity look-alikes was Mikhail Gorbachev. I believe I ticked the "gender: F" button after that revelation.
3. I've started writing a handful of short stories and never finished any of them.
4. I saw Andy Williams in concert with my parents when I was nineteen (and enjoyed the performance).
5. My college violin professor (at the dry campus of the Christian college I attended) bet me a bottle of wine and a bottle of whiskey that I would nail The Lark Ascending by Ralph Vaughan Williams in my senior recital (no, that's not me in the YouTube video, though I have worn a similar dress to perform a solo with an orchestra--mine was shorter. . . much). My dear teacher also threatened to make me drink a shot before going out on stage. Needless to say, she remains one of my favorite professors of all time.
6. I met Joshua Bell when I was eighteen!!!!! Shook his hand and chatted briefly, even (and I'm sure I was a witty eighteen-year-old--probably told him about my passion for Andy Williams). It was a small concert in a tiny church in central PA--just him and Samuel Sanders (pianist). I bet the seats weren't even half filled. He was but nineteen and just getting started as a soloist.
There, I feel better. I'm tagging my friend Barb over at the cardinal compass. Go, Barb, go!
5 comments:
#3 - me too! They're super-short!
I love the fact that you liked Andy Williams! This makes our singing of "Swinging On A Star" so much more fun!
And that YouTube clip of Moon River (linked to Andy's name, above) is why that song is one of my all time favorites, and why we tried to sing it last year.
We'll have to swap short stories--maybe we can finish them for each other!
I really do love "Moon River" too. I thought it was funny that the clip is from before even I was born!
I think it would be difficult to finish someone else's short story and have it make any sense - but probably worth a try someday.
Wow! You met Joshua Bell? That's pretty special; he's terrific.
I wish I had read your "six things" before I posted mine (in the comments of 3 Ring Binder's original post) because your last one reminded me of something.
I don't have any encounters as thrilling as Joshua Bell, but I did get called up on stage at a Louis Bellson/Pearl Bailey concert when I was maybe about fifteen. (Louis Bellson was one of my drummer heroes.) It turned out to be more embarrassing than anything else. My twin brother and I had to stand stupidly next to Bellson's drum set for a whole song. Still worse, Bellson had given us each one stick, gesturing to us that we were supposed to "play" along with the song. What the hell was I supposed to do with one stick, standing on the wrong side of a drum set? It was humiliating.
To top it all off, the mother of one of my friends - a fellow drummer in the high school band, no less - was in the audience, so the report of my ordeal spread around the school.
Stephen, I'm sorry you had a bad experience up on stage with a hero! I can't even imagine a similar experience--being coerced into trying to keep up with Josh Bell on a crappy, out-of-tune violin and a bow with little hair left?
I was asked (read, strongly encouraged) to turn pages for that very same pianist (Sam Sanders) who accompanied Bell some years later, when he was accompanying Itzahk Perlman in a concert for which I was psyched to have 4th row seats. Even though it meant I wouldn't get to meet this hero (probably the first violinist I ever noticed as a kid), I knew I wouldn't enjoy hearing Perlman play the concert if I had to concentrate on reading along in the piano music and turning pages at exactly the right time. Since it's the only time I've ever seen Perlman perform live, it still seems like the right choice, though not one with which my grad school profs agreed.
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