You can live in New York a long time and not do the things that people not living in New York think people living in New York do every day, or every month maybe. So last night I finally managed to see the New York Philharmonic play in Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln Center. I'm not an intense classical music listener, although I trained as a classical pianist for 8 or more years (when you're 7 does that count?), but it was hard to resist the program, ranging from Haydn to Ravel, with a Georgian-born rising-star violinist doing a virtuoso turn in the middle. The vastness of the hall itself was also worth the price of admission as well (although I was there as the guest of my cousin - thanks again, Tom...).
The concert was a nice contrast to my previous musical outing, which was just after I got back from Boulder. Despite a long day of travel, I managed to get myself downtown to Irving Plaza last Sunday night to witness the wall of light and sound that turns out to be The Secret Machines. Since my long-past attempts at rock journalism in college, I've tried to cultivate a less intellectual approach to describing music I enjoy. So I'll just say that it was as loud as it looks in this photo (I thought the drummer would ultimately just kick through the kick drum), but it was undoubtedly great, despite my back aching like crazy from the long plane ride. Reminded me that I probably skew a bit old for the typical audience for this kind of thing at this point in my life.
Juxtaposing these two experiences in this post reminded me of what family and friends told me when I decided to evolve into a scientist: that it "made sense," since I was always very musical. I would never argue, but I always suspected that they were thinking of something else. Many mathematicians, and theoretical physicists, turn out to be also excellent classical (and often jazz) musicians - the two disciplines requiring similar levels of a calm mind, technical expertise and, yes, theoretical sophistication. Now maybe I'm trying to rationalize my unwillingness to practice my Bach in favor of teaching myself Beatles songs at the age of 11, but I've always thought that I (possibly accidentally) found a good fit between my approach to music (which tends toward simplicity and spontaneity, but avoids being simplistic), and experimental physics. Both seem to encourage a particularly agitated mindset, perhaps bordering on ADD...
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