Sunday Pleasures

Blessed with sunny summer weather yet again, we went out late morning to the Cloud Mountain Farm Center's "Summer Harvest Day." We've been out there many times before, but not since they installed several large hoop houses to extend the growing season, and we were surprised to see that several varieties of cherries were being grown in one of them. Although cherry season has ended, Phil managed to find us a few hangers-on to taste. No damage from birds on those beauties!

We also took full advantage of the tasting tables, where you could try familiar and unfamiliar varieties of fruits and vegetables being grown at Cloud Mountain -- melons, tomatoes, peppers (both sweet and hot), peaches, plums, and berries. Look in the top lefthand corner of this link to see what I think is the best name and origin of the tasting -- "Collective Farm Woman," an "heirloom melon from Ukraine" -- and on Phil's jourmal to see me pondering my next tasting treat!

The farm store was open and we stocked up on fresh vegetables and fruits, and then headed home to switch from farm fans to music fans. Today was the final concert in this season's Marrowstone Music Festival, a marvelous summer orchestra training program that began in 1943, presented by the Seattle Youth Symphony Orchestras. The Marrowstone faculty of distinguished professional musicians work with more than 200 students, ranging in age from 13 to 25, who are accepted by audition from more than 30 states and several countries to take part in the two-week intensive program and perform in several concerts. (These are serious music students; the tuition for the two-week program, which includes housing and meals, is $2,570.)

The final concert today took full advantage of their skills and energy; the Concert Orchestra, comprised of the younger students, performed five of Antonin Dvořák's lively Slavonic Dances, Op. 46, followed by George Gershwin's evocative An American in Paris, which both of us have long loved. Listening with my eyes closed, I simply couldn't believe that it was being performed by such young musicians!

The Marrowstone Festival Orchestra was featured in the second half; I took today's photo while they were warming up. I thought the earlier orchestra was wonderful -- this one was utterly amazing! They performed Sergei Rachmaninoff's Caprice bohémien, Op. 12, which uses Gypsy themes, followed by Ottorino Respighi's marvelous Pines of Rome, which depicts musically the pine trees of the Villa Borghese, near a catacomb, on the Janiculum hill, and on the Appian Way.

There's nothing like live music filling your ears, mind, heart, and the very fibers of your being -- blissed-out, that's the best way to describe how I felt. The classical music that I love is clearly in good hands for decades to come, given what I heard today!

Blip 1005