yesterday’s music

Tonight’s concert (yesterday now, since it’s past midnight) featured Chinese oldies and movie music.  My fear of less-than-perfect ticket sales was unfounded.  It turned out to be way better than usual!  Those in the audience were, on average, middle-aged folks.  It wasn’t such a big deal, after all, that the younger members could not get their peers to attend the concert.

Most of the arrangements were quite good, and I’m not embarrassed to say that I enjoyed some of them.  The orchestra piece, I later found out, is in fact arranged by Kuan Nai-Chung (more about him in a future post), a composer I’m starting to favor.  And I just love the harp cum guzheng 千言万语 solo in that piece.  It was really really ethereal.

How would I feel, when I’m in my 50s or 60s to be sitting in a concert hall, listening to pieces that forms my musical diet today?  Today, this may just be another concert I perform in, one with its hiccups, technical challenges and foreign sounding song titles.  But what would someone from the audience say?

I don’t know how it feels to be 20 or 30 years older, but something stirred in me when I heard the amateur choir, made up of middle-aged men and women, sing 南屏晚钟, the only song I recognized, with a vitality, idealism and youthfulness I never thought would come from them.

我走出了丛丛的森林
我看到了夕阳红
又看到了夕阳红…