Airplane-to-Symphony-Hall Number Two

Today Sue returned from Yosemite, so I took a bus over to her place, drove her car to the airport, collected her, and had just enough time to drop off her bag before we caught the bus to the symphony because…

It was Dame Jane Glover conducting, Awadagin Pratt piano soloist. The two of them together are amazing. He plays as if the piano is part of his body. Sue and I were both gobsmacked. Transported. Blown away. I made this portrait at intermission.

The Dame is 75 and conducts with passionate presence and consummate skill—she hops, reaches, subdues, evokes, delays, speeds up. The orchestra responds with total attentiveness. Except once. When the audience clapped her back out from the wings at the end of the concert, she gestured to the orchestra to stand up. They refused. They made her take her own bows first. Then, after she’d taken all the Bravas and Bravos and standing ovations she could stand, almost reluctantly, on her insistence, they stood with her.