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How do you get to Carnegie Hall?
Although this won't be published until Saturday, I'm dating it Friday because it's all about Friday. That's good enough for me.
I've mentioned before, at least in passing, that Lauren works for a performing arts school, teaching physics and chemistry to students who are dedicating themselves to music, dance, drama, art, theater, or creative writing. Last night was the school's annual Gala event, held this year at Carnegie Hall in NYC. As a teacher, Lauren got complimentary tickets (otherwise going for $100 a pop) to the event, which featured performances by current students and alumni: there was a Brahms piano quintet (which isn't five pianos, it's a piano and a string quartet), there were some dance performances, a reading of poetry and a short story, a string ensemble, a full orchestra and musical theater performances, as well as the chorus. The school's head is retiring this year after 30 years or so, and the event was at least in part meant to honor her years of dedication to the school, but the performances were really the heart of the show, and they were absolutely amazing. The high school string quartet that played in the first piece was probably better than many undergraduate quartets, and that kind of talent carried over into the other ensembles and the performers in other genres. I suppose 4 hours of instruction each day, plus (no doubt) work on their own, will tend to lead to strong performances.
Oh, and you've probably heard of the venue, but if you haven't been there... it's pretty amazing. Not only a beautiful space, Carnegie Hall's excellent acoustics justify its fame.
Beyond the performance itself, we had a nice time. We met two of Lauren's college friends for dinner at a great little sushi place--we spent too much, but it was excellent and we had a nice time with her friends, who also went with us to the Gala. The friend who also hosted us several weeks ago also escorted us to Grand Central afterward, which was very nice of her to do, and we were glad to spend more time with her.
To get there and back again, we drove from Providence to New Haven, Connecticut and parked near Union Station. Not as close as we would have liked, but oh well. Two hours of driving and two hours of riding in a train. I would have loved to have taken a train the whole way, but it's to expensive: from New Haven we could catch a commuter train rather than Amtrak. It was nice to be able to do some reading (finished one book I was working on) on the way there and not have to worry about traffic and then to read and sleep on the way back. Because of the length of the performance, we couldn't leave Grand Central Station until 12:30 and we didn't get to New Haven until after 2 a.m. I have to say, I was a bit nervous about the long walk (close to a mile, I'd guess) to our car (New Haven doesn't have the best reputation, you know)--I was fairly sure we were going to be mugged, but actually the neighborhood there between Union Station and our parking garage wasn't bad at all.