Posts Tagged ‘Baltimore Symphony Orchestra’
Weekend Music Round-Up
Friday
- The Dance Party, Ra Ra Rasputin, Tigercity, Casper Bangs. 9:30 club. $15. All ages.
- Deja Blue, Clarence “Bluesman” Turner. Bangkok Blues. Call for price.
- Handsome Furs, Dri, The Cinnamon Band. Black Cat. $12. All ages.
- Lynne Fiddmont. Blues Alley. $25.
- Atheist, The Faceless, Psyopus, The Agonist, Gnostic, Condemn the Infected, A Bloodbath in Boston. Jaxx. $20/$23.
- Alex Brown Quartet (Fri. & Sat. show). Twins Jazz. $15.
- Sunsets with a Soundtrack: The U.S. Army Concert Band. West Steps U.S. Capitol. Free.
- Video Games Live! Filene Center at Wolf Trap. $20–$48.
- Samantha Crain & the Midnight Shivers. Kennedy Center Millennium Stage. Free.
- Chopteeth, DJ Thick. Rock and Roll Hotel. $15. All ages.
- Chance Gardner, Molehill, Gist. The Red & The Black. $8. +21.
“Dead Symphony No. 6″ @ Joseph Meyerhoff Hall
I wanted to avoid making anyone at the Joseph Meyerhoff Symphony Hall feel like a spectacle, so I ducked into the gift shop to jot down a few notes. In the lobby, mostly middle-aged Baltimore Symphony Orchestra patrons milled about in tie-dye t-shirts, teashades, and sunflower dresses. At 7:14 p.m. I had detected my first (and, sadly, only) whiff of marijuana, emanating from a group of youngish gentlemen hovering by a close-up photo of John and Yoko. Now a man was performing some kind of chi remedy on a guy with a broken wrist, cupping his hands and sending waves of healing energy through the afflicted’s arm. Carolyn Garcia—you may know her as Mountain Girl—chatted with folks, many of whom sheepishly asked her to sign their T-shirts. One of the T-shirts read “Deadheads for Obama,” and approximately two out of every three conversations included the phrase, “When I saw them back in 1977…” Meanwhile, a jester pranced around with a handful of flowers. “Every lady gets a flower,” he chanted. “Every pretty lady.” One such lady ingeniously converted her cleavage into a vase.
I surveyed the gift shop. A large woman with a hairnet and a dancing-bear muumuu was browsing. This was the world premiere performance of Lee Johnson’s Dead Symphony No. 6, “An Orchestral Tribute to the Music of the Grateful Dead”—not to mention Jerry Garcia’s 66th birthday—and the store’s silly musical trinkets and pretentious classical recordings seemed ill-suited to the evening’s proceedings. That is, except for one small novelty book, an edition of the “Wisdom from our Elders” series entitled Age Doesn’t Matter Unless You’re a Cheese.
Steve Harq–a short, smiling, gray-bearded man in purple tie-dye who was a beacon of ebullience as he bounced around the lobby–proudly embodied that philosophy. “Jerry’s what brought me here,” he said. “That was the best chapter of my life, 25 years on Dead tour. I think it’s great that someone took that spirit–the spirit of Jerry and Robert Hunter—and is using it, which is what Jerry would’ve liked. He was so diverse in his music. He—I’m sure he’s smiling and saying, ‘That’s fucking cool!’”
More on the concert, plus audio tracks, after the jump.
