Today was an interesting day. From 9:30-noon I managed the Festival Orchestra dress rehearsal as usual with John Williams conducting and Gil Shaham on violin. Gil played on two works composed by John himself: TreeSong and his Violin Concerto. These two pieces were prefaced by another “Williams” tune (Ralph Vaughan Williams that is) Overture from The Wasps and complemented by the finale, Three Excerpts from Holst’s The Planets. After the break today, we discovered a bit of a mistake in the program order and decided to swap TreeSong and the Violin Concerto. It sounds like an easy move but since TreeSong had already been rehearsed, certain musicians had already left and I needed to track them down. Additionally, we had to pin down the president of the Festival, Don Roth, to make the announcement to the audience (not really necessary, but he likes to do this kind of thing).
Well, on to the semi-exciting part. After rehearsal, a guest and myself went into town to grab some lunch. Eventually we decided on a diner in town called Boogie’s which tries really really hard to be a “classic” working man’s diner despite the fact that it is smack dab in the middle of one of the richest towns in the world. Throughout the meal, we were joking about the guys wandering around in suits and how they were secret service men. It turns out that the joke was on us. Just as I was finishing off my fried chicken and mashed potatoes, BAM there’s Bill Clinton standing about 20 feet away taking pictures with tourists. I realize that it really isn’t that big of a deal but honestly, it was pretty exciting coupled with the fact that I saw Harvey Keitel at Starbucks yesterday and just finished working with John Williams, Gil Shaham, James DePreist, Joshua Bell, Robert Spano, and David Zinman. So that was my Sunday…so far. I keep on telling myself to bring a camera wherever I go and get signatures. Maybe next week.
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