If it ain't Baroque…
Baroque Beliebers (That’s what they’re called, right?)
“Thought you might appreciate this new ‘Baroque’ version of Justin Bieber’s song ‘Beauty & a Beat,” said @bonaomi1. My readers know me so well!
In which I use a lot of shouty capitals
I know, I know; this isn’t the Composer Cagematch! you expected. Suck it up, kid, you can wait until next week – this is WAY better. For me, anyway. Have you guessed yet? I left you clues on Twitter all week and in the post yesterday! Anyone? Anyone?
That’s RIGHT! I’m going back to my very favorite place in the WHOLE WIDE WORLD. I’m going back to WALT DISNEY WORLD! Like that one time! And that other time! And that other time! And that other time!
But this trip comes with a SUPER DUPER EXCITING twist – I’m running the WDW Princess Half Marathon! This is my first ever half marathon, and sure to be the most picturesque; I’ll be running AROUND CINDERELLA’S CASTLE and THROUGH EPCOT! Take that, other half marathons of the world! It’s going to be AWESOME.
My last full 13.1 mile practice run clocked 2:26 and they give you 3:30 to finish, so I’m feeling good about grabbing that finisher’s medal. If you’re curious about my times, I’ve set it up so that my split times will be posted to Twitter. Feel free to cheer me on, as I’ll have my iPhone and may even be able to check Twitter while I go! The race starts Sunday morning around 6AM in the Florida dark. Where, incidentally, there are supposed to be highs in the 80s. AHAHAHAHA, WINTER IN THE MIDATLANTIC! YOU’LL NEVER GET ME ALIVE!
Anyway – as always, I’ll be Tweeting through my entire trip, with special attention paid to musical experiences, of which there are invariably lots. From Broadway-style shows to street musicians to simple background music, Disney invariably delivers, often even on the classical front. So follow me now – you won’t want to miss it!
I leave tomorrow mid-morning and return laaaate Sunday night, so your next regularly scheduled post will be coming atcha on Monday morning. Fear not, however; I’m not abandoning you quite yet. I’ll post your Concert Roundup for the week this afternoon, as I’d hate for you to miss a perfectly good concert while I’M AT WALT DISNEY WORLD YESSSSSSSSSSS!
Ahem. Right. Yes. Meet you back here in a bit. Carry on!
Important Note for Facebook Fans
This post is largely utilitarian in nature and addresses the following topics:
- It has come to my attention that Facebook recently changed their setting so that, even if you become a fan of a page or person, not all of their posts will show on your news feed (FB homepage). This means that if you rely on FB to alert you to new AB posts, you may be left in the dark, and your life doesn’t deserve that kind of tragedy. I urge you to head to the Ain’t Baroque Facebook page, like it if you haven’t already, and then – this is the important bit – hover over that same button you just “liked”; a drop down menu will appear. Now select “Show in News Feed”; for bonus points, you can also click “Get Notifications”, which I believe means FB will email you every time I post. Doesn’t that sound fun?
If you need help, FB has a page on the topic, or you can comment here and I’ll walk you through it as best I can.
- I went to a Flogging Molly concert on Tuesday. Before the concert, I tweeted at them that I hope to hear my favorite song (“Another Bag of Bricks”; thank you for asking!). THEY OPENED WITH IT. I am taking the position that this had everything to do with my request and nothing whatsoever to do with coincidence. I will NOT be entertaining alternate theories, understood? Behold the power of social media!
Right then. Carry on!
A viola joke that rings true, and free stuff – honest!
Goodbye. FOREVER.
Just kidding! I hope I didn’t cause in you any hopeless despair. No, I’m just taking tomorrow off for the purposes of heading down to Universal Studios so I can show my cousin around the Harry Potter section (and excuse, amirite?). As I did last time, I will be tweeting my way through my adventures; make sure you follow me on Twitter!
In the meantime, I got an email offering free BuildASign band banners to all my readers. Check that out if you need something to do while I’m gone.
Okay, see you next week! Viola joke, take us out:
Q. How many violists does it take to screw in a lightbulb? Continue reading
Composer Cagematch! Round 2: Saint-Saens vs. Grieg
Have you been paying attention? If you have, you know that I’m leaving for WALT DISNEY WORLD!!!!! tomorrow (the answer to your question is: this is my eleventh time). Two things can of course be taken for granted — I will a) be tweeting about my musical findings all throughout the trip (so follow me now!) and b) I’ll tell you all about it when I get back, which in this case will be on Tuesday, January 10.
But never you fear — I’m leaving you with a babysitter. Two, actually, because with the holidays out of the way [sad face goes here] we can return to our Composer Cagematches!
(Perhaps you are thinking, Jenn, whatever happened to the most recent match? To which I say: shhhhh. We don’t want to make Shostakovich feel worse than he already does and Bartok’s head is big enough. Okay? Okay.)
And so in this corner, he ain’t afraid of no Soviet Republic! It’s
CAAAAAAAMIIIIIIIIILLE SAAAAAAAAINT-SAAAAAAAAAAAAAEEEEEENS
And in this corner, he’s so literal about Herzwunden! It’s
EEEEEEEEEEEDVAAAAAAAAAARD GRIIIIIIIIIIIIIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEG
So who would you like to see die — Ase or a swan?
The terrible twos
Today Ain’t Baroque is two years old, and with age comes wisdom, yes? So for the past couple of weeks I’ve been pondering my mission.
As you may have read, this blog was begun as the cornerstone of my thesis for my arts management masters; at the time I was interning for the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, and I centered a large chunk of my content around the BSO. When the project ended, I found that I enjoyed having this forum, and so I carried on.
Sadly my official association with the BSO came to an end last year, and as such the my direction has had to evolve. I still mention the BSO quite a bit, but I have — out of necessity and desire both — shifted the focus. And I have wondered — what is AB for? *
To educate? No; I like to think that I dispense interesting factoids here and there, but I am not a professional musician, musicologist, or otherwise qualified for such a goal. To promote? Kind of, but I have found that the posts that prove most popular are the ones where I ramble on about my own opinions.
That is my answer, I think — I am here to think about classical music and how it has shaped my life, and in so doing, ask you to do the same. And because my approach is whimsical by nature, well, irreverence it shall be!
I hope you like it. I hope you’ll stay on, and encourage others to join the party. I hope you’ll ponder my queries and add your own stories. Because I love doing this, and I’d love to do more of it — but I can’t without you. I seem to recall saying this before, but I still believe it to be true: a blog cannot exist within a vacuum.
So subscribe! Tweet! Like AB on Facebook! Because one day AB is going to rule the world, and you want to get in good with me while you can, don’t you? 😀
Bee tee dubs, do you like the new layout? Hang tight, because I’ll be posting a State of the Blog address later today.
* Did you know that there’s actually no grammar rule that forbids ending a sentence with a preposition? Thank God, because sometimes the “proper” way sounds twisted and weird.
Stop! Gala time!
Hold the phones! Stop the presses! This is no time for LOLs!
Ladies and gentlemen, I have done it — thanks to the sweet, sweet PR head over at everyone’s favorite Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, I have procured tickets not only to the BSO’s season-opening gala concert on Saturday, but I’m also getting into the following dessert reception. With the orchestra. And Hilary. Hahn. (She doesn’t quite warrant a mothereffin’ a la Itzhak but she definitely deserves double punctuation.)
How did I finagle this? Why, I promised that I’d live-tweet the whole reception, of course. Duh.
So you had best be glued to your Twitter feed come, oh, say, 10 pm? The concert’s at 8:30, so I’m going to guess 10 pm. I’ll tell you who I see, who I hear, and who I’m too scared to talk to who I squeaked out a “hello” to and then ran away from. That’s the kind of sparkling content you can expect.
#bsogala is your hashtag; I don’t know if I’ll be the only one using it but you’ll get more comprehensive coverage if I’m not, so win-win. DO NOT FORGET. Follow me on Twitter NOW.
Is anyone else going to be there?
Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom (with apologies to Cory Doctorow)
It’s time once again for the favorite of posts: my trip photo recap! Hotcha!
And this was a bit of a historic event, because it was my 10th lifetime trip to Walt Disney World (assuming you don’t count last January when I went to Downtown Disney for a few hours, which I don’t). Why Jenn, you say, aren’t you tired of it by now? To which I reply: WHY AM I NOT THERE RIGHT NOW?!?! I just collapsed over my keyboard sobbing. Way to go.
Let’s relive it through some of my musical WDW experiences while I attempt to stem this tide of bitter tears, shall we?
As always, I tweeted about the trip as I went along. The hashtag was #baroquewdw, but I won’t bother linking it because Twitter will deny you. I’m afraid you’ll have to dig back through my Twitter feed if you want to find them. Oh, and to see larger versions of the below photos and some bonus photos not included in this post, check out the latest AB Facebook album.
Lunch our first day was at the Biergarten in Epcot’s Germany pavilion. It is, as you might have guessed, an Oktoberfest-type joint, with a buffet that offers such Teutonic fare as schnitzel, spaetzel, Bavarian cheesecake, and ALL the sausage. And of course there’s beer.
Oops, that’s not musical; how did that get in there? (WHY AM I NOT IN EPCOT RIGHT NOW, DRINKING GERMAN BEER?!?!)
I’ll tell you what is musical: a traditional German oompah band! Yes!
Violas of Mass Destruction
Don’t forget to follow me on Twitter so you can experience my amazing Disney tweets! And vote in the Composer Cagematch! before midnight on June 8!
That takes care of business. Now for pleasure:
Q. What caused the U.S. Marines, looking for Weapons of Mass Destruction during the most recent Gulf War, to raid a rehearsal of Baghdad’s symphony orchestra?
A dream is a wish your heart makes
They say that home is where the heart is.* This Friday I’m heading home.
Home to Walt Disney World, light of my life, fire of my — no, never mind; not that. But light of my life, definitely. I’ll be basking in the glory from June 3 through 8, and I will as always be tweeting the whole vacation through. Follow the hashtag #baroquewdw to see what musical madness I’ve dug up in the World (and if you need proof there’s music to be had, I’ve already got you covered).
And there should be new and exciting stuff this time — we have reservations at ‘Ohana, a Polynesian luau of sorts, so I’d best be hearing some ukulele, and there’ll be a traditional German oompah band at the Biergarten. My traveling companion and brother in kitty-striping Scott is a percussionist, so we’ll try to catch the JAMMitors in Epcot’s Future World and the African drummers in the Animal Kingdom. The WDW Band is always wandering around the Magic Kingdom, indigenous music is everywhere in the World Showcase, of course so many Disney movies are musicals — there’s no end to it, really.
Warm up and get psyched for the sheer, unadulterated joy of it with my last WDW trip recap. And if that isn’t enough for you, revisit my trip to Universal from January — not remotely the same, but still a lot of fun, plus you can laugh at my karaoke attempt.
If you’re bored while I’m away, entertain yourself by voting in the current Composer Cagematch! You have until Wednesday, June 8 at midnight to vote.
So remember: follow me on Twitter, and starting June 3 be on the lookout for the hashtag #baroquewdw. Ah, there’s no place like home.
If it ain't Baroque... 