Not Exactly What We Expected

In the midst of the Hayley madness, The Niece is experiencing a bit of her own madness. It’s end of term…time to turn in final projects, offer final performances, attend banquets, study for final exams and complete assignments that have been put off for far-to0-long.

This week, we tackled one such assignment: attend a classical music performance and write a report summarizing the event. I offered to help her, limiting my help to attending the performance with her (not writing the report, of course!).

Off we headed to the Eisemann Center for Keyboard Conversations with Jeffrey Siegel. It’s an interesting concept: gifted pianist performs pieces related to a particular topic and/or composer, interspersing lecture on the topic and/or composer throughout the performance.

Great idea, huh?

Anyway, we arrived at the Eisemann and found the venue teeming with people. We were surprised to see so many folks turn out for a piano performance but hey, who were we to judge? After all, we were there for the performance as well. And, like I said, lecture+performance is a great idea.

We’d planned to buy our tickets when we arrived. We headed off to the ticket booth. While waiting our turn, a man approached us and asked if we were attending that night’s event.

Yes, I said.

I won four tickets from the local radio station, said the man. I was only able to use two. I’d be happy to give you my extra tickets.

Great! we replied. (Lecture+performance+free tickets=winner deal!)

He melted back into the crowd and we headed to our auditorium. Just before reaching the attendant, we glanced at our tickets and saw:

I glanced at The Niece.

Correct me if I’m wrong, I said. But I don’t think Karl Rove is performing Chopin, do you?

Ummm, no, she said.

So off we headed to the ticket booth to buy tickets for our performance:

No wonder there were so many people at the Eisemann. And that also explains the protesters outside – I’d wondered what grudge those folks held against Chopin nearly 200 years since his death!