I Musici
Afterward, I couldn't believe that I'd done it. We were at Carnegie Hall last night, at the first concert of the new Orpheus season.
At intermission, two thirtysomethings who had been sitting four rows ahead of us were joined by a friend. He stood leaning on the back of the seat behind him, facing the rear of the hall, as he chatted. I was standing in the aisle, beside my seat, waiting for the other people in the row take their seats before sitting down myself. From snippets overheard, I hypothesized that the visitor might be pianist Jeremy Denk, who will be performing at Orpheus's next concert, and who also keeps a very intriguing Web log, Think Denk. Mr Denk has posted a snapshot of himself at the blog, something that hastened the identification process.
Qua pianist, he was safe from my attentions. Qua blogger, however - quite another matter. Still, I had to work up the nerve. When he left his friends, appearing to my mistaken ears to decline their offer to join them in an adjacent, empty seat, I let him pass right by. When I turned to see where he'd gone, I'd lost him. But, lo, suddenly there he was again, returning to his friends. I caught his eye, tried to look as harmless as possible, and asked him if he might be who I thought he was. He very affably said that he was, and he shook my outstretched hand as I told him that I was "R J Keefe, Daily Blague," effectively taking it for granted that he would know what that meant. He registered recognition, although it may have been simple politeness. I made a remark to show that I'd read his latest entry (indeed, I'd been thinking about it while hypothesizing), said that I was looking forward to hearing him in December, and then let him go. He couldn't have been nicer.
The encounter firmed up my resolve to make some additions to the main-page list of links to other sites. A recent exchange with Steve Smith, author of Night After Night, inspired me to make an exception to my general rule, which is that I don't link to monothematic blogs. Blogs exclusively devoted to music and concertgoing would seem to fall under the ban, but in fact it's impossible to write at any length about music without being very person, however inadvertently. If you're at all interested in serious music, I'm sure that you'll find the sites that I've listed under the rubric "I Musici" interesting.
As for the concert....
