What a lovely day.  It is clear, sunny a little cool still but promising, promising.  This bird sat for a long long time at the top of the tree at the corner of my street.  I guess he was soaking up the warm rays of the sun but there were a few breezes and he had to spread his tail feathers a few times to keep his balance up there.  He didn’t give up but sat up there, rocking in the wind and enjoying the sun.

I want to write something about the concert I went to on Tuesday evening.  It was very interesting to sit up in the front row.  Certainly it was a unique experience for me.  I was able to see most of the musicians so clearly.  I was so close, in fact that a few of them were obscured because I was rather low down compared to other experiences I have had in music halls.  I certainly had an opportunity to examine shoes and stockings!  One very endearing point was that the first violinist unbuttoned his white bow tie so that he could get his instrument into a comfortable position.  I couldn’t see one of the violists (is that what you call a guy who plays the viola?) as the music stand got in the way because I was looking up to the stage.  Usually I like to sit in the balcony in Bourgie Hall but this certainly was different.  I could distinguish the various “voices” of the different instruments better.  I want to tell about the man who played the double bass.  On Tuesday evening there was a very talented young lady featured who played two pieces, one on the cello and one on the piano.  She was very young and her delivery was very emotional.  Often she played with her eyes closed and you could see she was very involved with the emotional tone of the music.  The cello piece was particularly gripping and at times even a little frightening, but I told you a little about this young lady on Tuesday night.  What struck me was the presence of the man who played the double bass.  This is not an instrument that attracts our attention as a rule.  It is there to provide body, depth and tone to most pieces.  And this is what happened on Tuesday.  What I liked though was his stance, his way of waiting, keeping time with his heel sometimes, attacking the music when he had a passage to play with the violins, violas and cellos.  He seemed a little older than many of the other members of the orchestra and he was like a guardian, like a soldier keeping watch and waiting.  Sometimes he had rather a jaunty air, holding his bow with one finger as he watched the score and waited and once, as the young pianist was playing a brilliant passage of the Mozart piano concerto, I saw him practicing his fingering for when he would have to come in.  As the beautiful young ladies in their long dresses (indispensable for a woman playing the cello!) took their parts like slender angels and the drums at the back of the orchestra rolled away, there he was, the double bass player, standing cool and off to the side, waiting, watching over them.  And here he is.