Double Date

We had a lovely weekend with two dates in two days! Saturday evening, Jeff took me the symphony for the last pops concert of the season. It featured two soloist and a choir performing music from Broadway, musicals, filmscores and Disney movies. The female vocalist was the woman who performed the original Ariel in The Little Mermaid! That is probably the first movie I remember seeing in the theater. I was about 9 or 10 and my mom took my sister and me to The Little Mermaid while my dad took my two older brothers to a Star Trek movie (I think that's what it was; some sort of sci-fi anyway).

Jeff and I had great balcony seats for the performance, but we also had the trifecta of concert difficulties; loud talkers behind, tall people in front, and a woman with overwhelming perfume beside! At the intermission, Jeff moved us to some empty seats that had an even better view than the ones we had paid more for, and we were able to thoroughly the enjoy the remainder of the concert in perfect comfort.

Sunday evening, we went to dinner followed by the UAH semi-finals basketball game. It might not sound like much, but the UAH team is ranked 7th in the nation for Division II basketball. That's pretty impressive for a bunch of short, white engineers. Okay, they don't all fit all three of those categories, but I think every one of them fits at least one! It was a very exciting game with UAH finally winning by 3 in overtime. We're off to the final game of the regionals tonight to see if they can hold off Stillman!

The win!

Bublé Boogie

Jeff surprised me last Thursday night by announcing that he needed to pack for the weekend. I was confused by the reference until he used his iPhone to bring up a favorite Michael Bublé song and I realized he had bought tickets to the live concert in Nashville! We had tried to find a show in the past, even looking while we were in Germany and Michael Bublé was simultaneously touring Europe, but it hadn't worked out. But Sunday evening we enjoyed the show from the front row of an upper balcony directly overlooking the stage. Although I've been to numerous ballets, operas, symphonies, etc., it was my first real "concert" in the popular sense.

The opening act (and guest performers on a select number of Bublé songs) was Naturally 7, a seven man a cappella/vocal play group. It was really an incredible warm up, as these men used no instruments whatsoever but were, in fact, the instruments themselves. They become the drums, the bass, the electric guitar, the scratching turntable, the trombone and other brass, miscellaneous percussion, etc to accompany their lead singers.

Naturally 7

The main show opened with great theatricality and continued strongly for the next hour and a half. In addition to his many recorded hits, we enjoyed Twist and Shout, Walking in a Winter Wonderland, and a Michael Jackson impersonation. The live band was fabulous and it was an incredible evening. We capped it off by a easy walk back up the hill to our cozy hotel room.

Armstrong Auditorium dedication

We've been super busy lately, so I've neglected the blog. We had a great time at the dedication of Armstrong Auditorium in Edmond, OK over the Labor Day weekend. Here are a few photos of the event and the splendor!

Twelve magnificent columns


View from the balcony


In front of the swans in our Dedication ceremony "whites"
(please forgive the iPhone blurriness!)


Ezekiel Temple model


Red carpet and white formal-wear welcome for
Sir David Winn at the Swans in Flight unveiling

Berlin Ballet

Last night Jeff took me to one of the most beautiful ballets I've ever seen. For only 17 Euros a seat, we got great, unobstructed views from the balcony, melodious notes from the full live orchestra in the pit, classic choreography, stunning sets, and lush costuming!

I was unfamiliar with the ballet Die Bajadere (or La Bayadére, the original French title), the story of a love triangle set in majestic India. It premiered in 1877 and I'm so glad it is being produced today. It is considered the precursor in style to the far more famous Swan Lake and Les Sylphides.

The dancing was superb and the audience very receptive and appreciative of it. Jeff found the principal ballerinas and the corps de ballet very elegant and beautiful. For me, I would quote Gretel's firm statement in The Sound of Music (while watching the ladies and gentleman dancing at the ball), "I think the MEN look beautiful". There is something so awe-inspiring about the unexpected combination of grace and power and flexibility in a classically trained male dancer. There was spontaneous applause and "Bravo"s from the spectators several times during the various male solos.

All in all, it was an incredible three hours and an absolute bargain. If you ever make it to Berlin, the Staatsballet is a must see! I forgot to get the camera out when I checked my bag in the cloakroom, but here are a few photos from the website.

Street musicians

Like any large city, there are many people on the street asking for your money. But my favorites are the street musicians; they are really talented here!

The most common instrument seems to be the accordion. They play mostly upbeat tunes. I've heard classics like the William Tell overture and traditional songs like Hava Nagila. Of course, those are only a few pieces in their huge repertoire that they shift amongst effortlessly. They sit very politely in the S Bahn station or down in the underground terminals and accompany the passengers as they hurry to and fro. I enjoyed listening to a guitarist today on the U Bahn, and we even had a trio hop on the light rail train one evening with an accordion, a recorder, and some other instrument I couldn't see. Good culture and talent seem to pervade many aspects of German life!

Odyssey into Space Art

Huntsville Skyline

In honor of NASA's 50th anniversary, the Smithsonian Institute put together a national tour titled NASA ART 50 Years of Exploration. It is currently on exhibit at our Huntsville Museum of Art, so Jeff and I took one last afternoon off (before he begins teaching classes next week) to go see it this past Tuesday.

We accidentally wandered into the last exhibit hall first and were initially rather disappointed. It was all very modern and "forward thinking", but not exactly to our taste. It didn't seem to be art that took much talent, just an odd way of thinking on the part of the artist (and the viewer, for that matter). But we quickly realized where the beginning was and found some great works we really enjoyed.

NASA had commissioned established and renowned talent from the very start of the space program to document its progress with fine art. The art was grouped in exhibit halls by the stages of the NASA program; first Mercury, then Gemini, Apollo, the Space Shuttles, etc. We had started in the more futuristic Mars exhibit that looked forward to the NASA missions to come; hence the less concrete, more abstract works. But we loved the acrylics, watercolors, pen sketches, and oil pieces in the exhibits from the 60's and 70's.

My favorites were several of Paul Calle's works. Here is a photo of one of the actual canvases we saw, The Power to Go; in person, the texture and colors are amazing. You can almost feel the heat and energy. Jeff remarked how well the artist had superimposed the color variations of an intense flame, with the white-hot heat in the center and the darkening glow on the perimeter. It was even more personal to realize this was an interpretation of the 7.5 million pounds of thrust produced by the Saturn V rocket, the very same rocket model I drive by in Huntsville on a regular basis.

Paul Calle's "The Power to Go"

Jeff was drawn to a lesser-known Norman Rockwell work called Behind Apollo 11. The bright, talented faces looking upward are so reminiscent of a time when the whole world watched in anticipation of our success. I love that Rockwell included the wives and launch pad workers, who surely worked as tirelessly behind the scenes as the more prominent scientists and administrators did in the public eye.

Norman Rockwell's "Behind Apollo 11"

All in all, it was a fantastic exhibit, so please be sure to visit if it stops at a museum near you!