Today I learned an important lesson. See, another day learning something! That's what makes life worth living, right?

Anyway, I learned that I really like classical music and I was missing that in my life. I was missing the time sitting and listening to a good concert. But today I did just that! I went to the Oklahoma City Philharmonic concert here in Stillwater. A two-hour concert with a very interesting music selection, with not-overplayed pieces, most that I didn't actually know:

Malcom Arnold - Four English Dances - Second Set: Pretty uplifting dances, nothing extremely complex and deep (well, they are dances, right?), but well executed (with some exceptions). Good choice for an opening of a concert.

Edgar Meyer - Concerto in D Major for Double Bass: The composer was invited to play the double bass. He is an amazing musician, with a very interesting piece that sometimes seemed like he was playing the double bass like a rock guitarist. Great execution, great thing to hear for the first time.

Giovanni Bottesini - Gran Duo Concertante: With Edgar Meyer on the double bass and Felicia Moye on the violin as the soloists. Both played amazingly well! And the piece, another one I haven't heard before, is very interesting, full of little surprises. It was just different to listen to two solo instruments that were so far apart in range to be "conversing" on stage.

Richard Strauss - Don Quixote: Fantastic Variations on a Theme of Knightly Character, Opus 35: The only piece I have heard before. In order for people to follow the story they gave a cheat sheet to everybody with the variations and the story behind each variation and they had a person on stage (actually two people) that changed a sign showing in which variation they were. A little distracting for a sort of complex piece, but it was a good idea for a performance in a university.

There is only one thing that made me a little sad about this concert. It kind of hurts me to see that the public was mainly Stillwater residents and professors. Not many students actually went to watch it. It is sad to see the reality of this generation.

Anyway, the rest of the day went uneventfully. I can't say I worked much today, but I left my program running a lot. There were too many details I had to take care of.