my initial perusal through the show listings for may actually pulled out the may 3rd show - which is chopin to start and xiu xiu to close - as the most likely day out, all month. it's even looking like it's going to be a nice day....

but, a closer look through the logistics indicates that this would not have been likely.

first, i wasn't entirely sure what "xiu xiu (solo)" actually meant. it seems like a jamie stewart acoustic set, which would have been of minimal interest to me. that's probably what i should have expected, but i just wasn't sure.

second, it turns out that the chopin set was in the suburbs, again - apparently so that orchestra hall could be rented by some students for a recital. this is actually sort of shocking, to me. it didn't happen, so i'm just going to leave it at that. but, it's sort of beyond disappointing to finally tune in, only to have them ship all of the interesting performances out of town, and replace them with watered down trash for the uneducated masses.

so, what that means is that what i thought would be a short walk to the orchestra hall, followed by a short walk to el club, would actually be an almost impossible transit nightmare out to the furthest reaches of the detroit metropolitan area and back, and neither this particular chopin piece nor a jamie stewart acoustic set would be of enough interest to me to justify such a thing, unless maybe i was out that way on the saturday night, anyways....

my interest in the chopin piece shouldn't be surprising given what i've already posted. the piano was the main instrument during the romantic era, which is the type of classical music that i find most compelling, so these concertos by beethoven, tchaikovsky, rachmaninov and now chopin are actually in a continuity with each other. the debussy is not far removed from it, either.

this particular piece by chopin was written when chopin was very young, and only months after beethoven had died. it is not difficult to tell who the dominant influence on the young chopin really was, meaning this comes off as a sort of addendum-to or beethoven-lite - which is not to say it's a bad piece, so much as to clarify that it is a little bit outside of chopin's own distinctive style. hey, i've been critical of myself for holding up my own influences on my sleeve as a teenager, as well. that was even normal 200 years ago, it turns out.

there's a high chance i'd have gone if i could have walked, but i don't know if i could have even bussed out to where it was.

let's hope the dso gets back to scheduling things downtown, next year. book the lightweight stuff in ferndale, or something...