The Tucson Symphony

A Trip to The Symphony 

Tonight, the fancy suit is coming out of the dry cleaner plastic wrap and getting ready to impress the Tucson elite!

In my quest to find the finer things Tucson has to offer, I happened to win a pair of tickets to the Tucson Philharmonic. You may be wondering how I was able to afford these tickets, because let's face it college students aren't rolling in the dough. Well I will have to confess, I did not buy these tickets. I won them by being caller number 12 on 104.1 KQTH.

So does this count as a casual trip or a random excursion, probably not. But the symphony and the musical arts are vital to the preservation of culture and history in our neighborhood. Still not convinced. Well I'd like to see you play Vivaldi's Four Seasons in E-minor and then speak to the audience about the cultural underpinning of musical scales. I certainly couldn't!

Act I: The Thunder

  

If there is one thing Tucson is exceptionally good at, is random weather patterns. The night of the concert can be best described as cold, windy, and annoyingly rainy. The rain came and went, in the form of sprinkle showers of course. And just when you thought being wet was bothersome, the wind came in to brighten your day. Not a good start to fancy outing. But there was a pick-me-up which manifested in the form of the concert hall. The stunning lighting, the glistening  golden and turquoise tiles, the crystal chandelier. It was like entering another world, one of art, of style, of class. Never would I have equated the harsh, desert landscape with its prickly pears and rattlesnakes with the aristocratic aura of the symphony. I was shell shocked.   

Act II: The Show!

Once I was seated, and the curtains slowly inched opened, the was a stillness in the air. The musicians began tuning their instruments for the final time and occasionally strumming a scale or two. The was a hum vibrating out from under the stage, not something a machine would make, but the sound of dozens of strings moving vigorously in thin air. All the senses were being overwhelmed, everything that could be seen, heard, felt, smelled culminated in that theatre. Then, a single light cord began to ring out into the audience. The first chair violist was calling attention to his fellow artists, they too joined in, masterfully striking the same note simultaneously. This rush of sound lasted for only a few seconds, but left wonder in its wake. The silence proceeding lasted for a mere minute, yet it was ominous, as if we the audience had no idea what was to come. What came was a sprinkle, a dance of colors, a wisp of wind. The silence turned into a storm. The winds, the brass, the drums all shattered the tranquility, hailing in sounds that I haven't heard in many years. The Tucson symphony brought us Tucson weather.