confessions and an evening concert

I have a confession to make...I'm kind of a nosy mail opener.


Yes, sometimes I open mail that doesn't belong to me. It works to
my advantage at my job, because I am the chief mail opener and I
usually get a lot of fun packages at work. I open all of our mail at
home (except when it looks special and is addressed to Jon). Plus, Jon
knows me well enough to send mail that I shouldn't see to his work
office.



 The most awful thing that I've ever done was when I was in high
school. There was a thick envelope from the Detroit Symphony addressed
to my mom. Thinking that they must have addressed it to the wrong
person (I was the musician in our family, of course), I opened it
thinking that it was just a sales brochure. But, it wasn't a sales
brochure. It was a large stack of tickets. My mom walked in the room
just in time to scold me, yell "Rebekah" in a deeply disappointed
manner and grab the envelope away from me.



Why was it such a big deal?

I had just opened up my Christmas present of season tickets to the symphony two months early. Yikes!

She
threatened to return the tickets, but she didn't and I was able to
enjoy lots of great concerts with the Detroit Symphony that year.


 

Ever since then, I've tried to go to a handful of concerts each
year. We've been really fortunate to get great deals on tickets through
friends and discount organizations. These past two years, we have
participated in the 37/11 series. If you're under 37 years old, you can
get tickets to selected shows for $11 each. Jon bought tickets to the
first concert of the series this year and, for some reason, the tickets
were only $3.50 each. That's $7.00 total! That's less than a yard of
fabric!

The best part about it was our seat location...first row of the
dress circle and our favorite seats in the house. Tickets in the seats
where we sat normally go for $75 each. Ever since he scored the
tickets, anything that we buy is automatically referred to in DSO
amounts. "that's five times as much as tickets to the DSO" or "man,
this lunch is good, but we could have gone to see the DSO twice for
what we paid for this."

So, we got to hear our favorite symphony and watch our favorite musician friends for only $7.00.  The featured artist of the evening was, Sharon Isbin.  She is incredibly talented. I loved hearing her playing her guitar. She sounded like buttah! And, she played one of my favorite pieces, Fantasia por un gentilhombre by Rodrigo. As much as I love playing it on the flute, I have to admit that it was made for the guitar and sounds so much better on a stringed instrument.

 

One day...one day, I will pull out my guitar and work up those calluses again! Hearing her play was such an inspiration!