Fabulous Misfits

Because it was raining (well, there was a lull between the rains) and more importantly only 58 degrees (I can’t even. Erin go fuck yourself. actually, I have no idea if this is Erin’s fault or if this is the thing that’s keeping Erin from destroying us and I’m pretty sure Trump will either decide we’re not getting any disaster relief or just use it as an excuse to round up immigrants, dissidents, and anyone who looks remotely foreign), we got a sort of truncated concert.
That is to say, they bookended the concert with the first and final movement of the Eroica (he described the last movement as a dance in which all social classes would dance together) and removed the Coriolan Overture entirely, performing just the Romance no. 1 and a medley of Haitian works. Since I’ve already (I said the weather was similar but then I looked it up and it was much colder) heard the Eroica back in January and the Coriolan Overture a whole bunch, and I was mostly there for the Haitian music (and eating Brazilian food, something similar to last time except replacing the white rice with carreteiro, which is meat with beef and veggies, along with roasted corn, black beans, fried bananas, pickled onions, viniagrette with tomatoes onions and bell peppers, and pico de gallo with tomatoes onions cilantro and peppers and green hot sauce. note to self, try the Malagueta or mintchurri) anyway.

Beethoven's Eroica premiered in 1804, the same year as the Haitian Revolution, which both connect to Napoleon, since at the same time he started conquering the rest of Europe, he reinstated slavery in the colonies and Haiti had a form of slavery that was brutal even by the standards of contemporaneous chattel slavery.

Quand nos Aïeux brisèrent leur entraves by Occide Jeanty was once the anthem of Haiti. It sounds like a march. In lieu of the lyrics, Jean Dany Joachim recited his poem. Val Jeanty's Faces is sung, with orchestra, violin, and turntables. Kote Moun Yo is a traditional song arranged for turntables, violin, orchestra, drum ensemble, with Joachim reading another poem.
This was in planning since last year and I have no idea why it was pushed back to this year.

Only about 50 brave souls showed up, one of them Gabriella. Her cat Sambucina has discovered the joys of frozen sardines while the other cats just sniff them for a long time without eating them.

Next week looks like what we were promised this week, cool but somewhat sunny.

burning question: does thre James Damore cocktail at some SF tech event come pre-roofied?

Kaitlin (I had to ask how to spell her name because there are so many different ways) is a florist. Her bag was covered in stick-on gemstones. Once I found a bunch while on a walk and pocketed them in order to make something with them (this was years ago and spoiler alert, I never did) and she said it was probably her that dropped them. She has a star pendant and some sort of leaf pendant. She has a crocheted chicken on her other bag because her driver was once selling his mother’s crocheted critters and she was so charmed that she had to buy it.

Nia was wearing a Type O Negative shirt. October Rust. October Rust was her first album. My first album was World Coming Down when it came out, but the thing is I listened to Cinnamon Girl when that came out just kind of forgot about them until Everything Dies came out. Sort of like Deftones and Vast in that regard, except I picked up Vast’s two albums (at the time) on a sort of whim of the “hey, I remember this song” variety. October Rust is my favorite of their albums, though.

I got the Santorini Summer Salad from Salonika, which is mixed greens, watermelon, green and black olives, cucumbers, feta, pickled onions, pita chips, mint, sumac, urfa pepper, red wine viniagrette and rose water syrup. Quite good. I thought that an Urfa pepper was a type of pepper like a pepperoncini but it’s acutally ground up into a powder. I want to try their visino limeade, visino being sour cherry. I don’t know if that’s a summer only thing but what I do know is that it’s been around for a while. The bee was harassing me for that but then some people showed up with fig and goat cheese pizza and the bees started harassing them instead. And, you know what, I can’t blame them.

There was a pre-concert consisting of a choir singing sea shanties (A-Roving, Song of the River, Reflections of a Lad at Sea, Away From The Roll of the Sea) and Under The Sea from The Little Mermaid. That's your solution to everything, to move under the sea. It's not going to happen.
As bad as everyone talking is because somehow they're unaware this is going on (I daresay they could do a better job getting people's attention), it’s better than Jordan Hall where all you can hear is the conversations.

Erich Wolfgang Korngold - The Sea Hawk overture
I thought this was the overture to an opera but it’s actually from a movie. Well, I guess they did have opening credits before Star Wars. It’s an Errol Flynn movie about an English privateer and the Spanish ambassador’s niece.
Maurice Ravel - Une Barque sur l’océan
It’s synchronized with a video of right whales.
Paul Gay - North Atlantic Sea Songs
It’s a world premiere so you aren’t going to find it anywhere. He’s the principal trombonist of the Boston Ballet’s orchestra.
The two baritone-sung movements are rather slow and contemplative. One is a poem he wrote called Seabreese and one is the Robert Frost poem ‘Stars’. Flying Lesson: Profile of a Puffin sounds like the theme music for a knockoff Bat-Villain named the Puffin, whimsical but with a bit of a menacing undercurrent, and Squall sounds less like a squall and more like a dance. The geese are the end were unexpected but welcome.

Samuel Barber - Adagio for Strings
This shows a video of glaciers and reefs then and now but ends with an optimistic note showing the Cuyahoga River and Boston Harbor. The first part was easy. You can just match up all the details. But reefs? That’s just guesswork.

I guess they removed the Hebredies (which they played at their last collaboration with the Aquarium and replaced it with Pirates of Penzance and Mikhail Ippolitov-Ivanov’s Caucasian Sketches (!?).
Pirates of Penzance works because they’re sea pirates, not space pirates or Mad Max style land pirates. Oh yeah, if you’re at all familiar with the song Hail Hail, The Gang’s All Here, the melody was ripped from With Catlike Tread, which shows up in the overture.
As for Caucasian Sketches, it works for a procession of sea turtles. It started spitting rain at the time. It also got cooler.

Claude Debussy - La Mer
The rain stopped by then.

Emma is a dancer and really likes the way I get little details like her necklace.

Someone compared Dubai chocolate to a Reptar Bar and now I can’t not see that.
burning question: what flavor do you think Reptar Bars would be? I’m thinking key lime because I’ve had chocolates with key lime goop that is that exact shade of radioactive green. But it should also have nuts and caramel according to the jingle Angelica sings. But, y’know, if you’re going to make a Reptar Bar, you’re going to have to make it taste green, not just be green.