Mambo Taxi

Precis summary: Go. See. Sunday in the Park with George at the Shaw Festival, playing through November 1.

d. said in his review that if you go on Sunday, it's $40 a ticket. Very worth it and the drive to get there, from here at least. (If you're in Colorado, possibly not...) d's seen it a bunch of times, sometimes well-done, sometimes not so well. But the Shaw did it justice. 

I had never seen this show; I've listened to d. singing from it, and playing the album from it, for as long as we've been together. 

The story is of George Saurat, whose most famous painting is hanging in Chicago's art gallery. I saw it in '06, and ya know what? I liked it.  A good portion of the first act takes place among the 'real people'  who Saurat is painting; and eventually we see them collected as characters within the painting.  The story of Saurat is somewhat fictionalized, as he was fairly unnoticed during his lifetime.  In this story he's got a girlfriend who leaves him for a baker, who comes to America, then in act two, her daughter is the grandmother of an artist working with video and light.

The songs, which I've heard many times over the years, become a lot less disconnected with the show to tie it together.  The pieces at the end of Act One, where things come together- are really worth seeing on stage.

The overall themes that spoke to me: from chaos, order; the march of time; the challenges of being an artist and living with an artist. But mostly: the joy and wonder of creation. 

The production was well done. The costuming was wonderful: mostly the florid 19th century France in act one. 

The set was properly realistic and also "cardboard cutout" where appropriate. (In act one, there were a pair of soldiers; one was an actor, and the other was an identical painted cutout. Which got played for laughs when they went on double-dates). The sound was fine: as d. mentioned, the players were un-miked, which was a joy.

Mostly I want to say, yeah, good show. And have those of you who haven't seen it, to be on the lookout for good productions of it where ever you are!

A quick concert review. If I have time, I'll go back and fill in details and links later, but I know if I start that now I'll fall asleep before I finish it.

This evening, after the last talks, eight or so people from the conference headed up to Pritzker Pavilion in Millennium Park to see the Silk Road Ensemble with Yo-Yo Ma. This was a free concert to inaugurate an upcoming year of Silk Road events, including theatre, museum shows, concerts, and festivals, and lucky us, they kicked off tonight.

I have no idea how many people were actually present. The pavilion has seating for 17,000 (I think), and the few acres of grass outside were pretty full of blankets and chairs. But the concert-space is.. by far.. the best outdoor venue I've ever been in. (I've got to find a good representative pic to put here).

There were about 30 huge speakers suspended over the entire venue, very high quality; and three huge video screens suspended over the stage. This worked well. It's also beautiful, with the most elaborate permanant stage I've ever seen, indoor or out.

The concert was short (before encore) but they played three extra pieces in the encore. By the title of the ensemble, I was expecting mostly Chinese music, but there were only ~3 Chinese pieces. One Asian-influenced piece was commissioned for the Chronos Quartet; called "Gallop of a Thousand Horses" (I don't know whether to count that as a Chinese piece but it did sound it). There was a single Italian piece by Giovanni Gabrieli, performed by the Chicago Symphony Brass Quartet. There was tabla improv with string accompaniment which worked quite well; they had a guest tabla player from India named Sandeep Das who collaborated with local students on this piece. Most tabla sounds... monotonous to me. But this piece had "movements" which I could recognize, and I liked the string accompaniment (who knew: viola plus tabla?). This was probably my favorite piece.

There were three or so pieces of Roma music, which I wasn't as impressed with. There was an Indian piece which included a Chicago dance theatre. They didn't translate to video all so well, as far as I could tell.

There were a mixed group of people in their 50s and 60s right behind us who seemed to be getting quite into their cups (well, wine glasses) by the end. Otherwise, the crowd was fine. Very mixed crowd. i was surprised at the number of younger adults, people in their 20s and 30s.

There was a special moment, during a piece called "Swallow Song" where a gull started calling, almost in response to the soaring music. And another gull took passes overhead, trying to figure out how to get at all of that picnic food even though the space was really full of humans too.

it didn't rain, though it was threatening the entire time.

After, we took the train to Chinatown. The plan was to find a reasonably-close place that looked good from outside, but while we were walking, one person in our group (who is a bit... outgoing) politely asked an elderly Chinese couple we were walking past if they recommended anywhere for dinner.

They were headed to their favorite place and invited us along with them (down two blocks, and I imagined the gangsters jumping out of the alley and paying them off before mugging us); The restaurant looked like not-much from the outside but it turned out to be considerably better than I expected, and darn cheap too. (insert name here).

Over dinner we mostly talked about designing cities better (with less sprawl), ecology and water conservation, and open-source software. I made sure the group all added their names to the conference wiki page for the concert, since I expect I'd enjoy future conversations with them and I barely learned one name over dinner.

And now, to bed, since tomorrow starts early.

Oh yeah. this is hillarious. They (geek 2 geek) advertized in the Chicago Tribune.

I'm in Chicago. First task tomorrow: replace my camera's CF card.

I bought my digital camera in 2001. One of its features was its massive storage capacity: a 340 MB hard-disk, in CF form-factor. (Man, that was a lot of storage then. And so tiny!) But progress marches on. Now my camera is old, slow, and I was wondering when I could afford to replace it.

Yesterday, I tried a regular CF card in it. Weow, it's like a whole new camera, so much faster.

Staples has a sale on CF cards. $30 gets you 1GB. That seems like progress to me.

--

emaki and I are in a hotel just next to McCormick Place. It's overlooking some odd looking statuary.

( Blade Runner? )

Also, the
( bedside table )
has both a Gideon Bible and The Teaching of Buddha. [ed: fixed titles]

Tomorrow: architecture tours.