Hawaii Redux

The second week of July, I was on the Big Island of Hawaii, at the Hawaii Performing Arts Festival. Good times were had by all in the clarinet masterclasses led by Yehuda Gilad. The Friday evening (July 11) concert was a blast, closing with a rousing performance of my Super Legend Quest Fantasy III (I played the contra part on bass... more exotic auxiliaries were not schlepped halfway across the Pacific).

What struck me most about the performance was the response I got from many of the more senior audience members. While I expected people of my generation to connect to the video game style of the piece (and many did), I was also approached by multiple older members of the audience, who commented that they too could relate to the piece, as it was reminiscent of all the sounds of the video games their kids played growing up and that they, too, had therefore overheard countless hours of.

The unexpected relations are the ones I enjoy most.