Music Painted on an Autumn Evening's Sky
Another happy story.
It was a picture-perfect setting for a spectacular concert. Picture-perfect in every last detail.
As always, click on thumbnails to expand
It was the first real break in the oppressive heat of summer for St. Louis, the first real evening without the humidity and warmth which blankets the city near-continuously from late April. It was a brilliant blue evening, the pastels of sunset fading into the west. It was the broad green carpet of the mighty Great Lawn of St. Louis' Forest Park, sloping gently down to the waters of the Grand Fountain. And it was two or three thousand folks gathered in the first comfortable breaths of coming autumn, to hear the opening concer of the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra season. Including M. and me. :-)
She was finishing a brutal series of calls on the Cardiac Intensive Care Unit and Pediatric Surgery divisions. I was in the midst of Heme/Onc-BMT. We conspired to escape one evening with a picnic basket loaded at a nearby botique grocer's -- risotto cakes and salmon pate, a salad of Northern Italian extraction, handfuls of fresh fruit and fine dark chocolate -- pitched our tarp and blanket at the foot of the Art Museum along with thousands of other evening revelers, and sat back to enjoy the show. :-)
Rossini's Magpie Overture. Orchestral selections from The Wizard of Oz. Verdi's triumphant Aida fanfare and Berlioz's Hungarian March and so many more. A glorious riot of famed music, music us classical geeks could sing along to, as brilliant sunset turned into spectacular star-spangled night. Others had brought chairs, but what need does one really need for chairs? A blanket lets one stretch luxuriously back, lie on the softness of the lawn while music washes over you, watching shooting stars and satellites cross the vault of heaven and the fresh evening air and cool night breezes caress your skin. It was a beautiful night. It was a wonderful concert, all the way until the heroic strains of Sousa's Stars and Stripes Forever touched off a long finale of fireworks blazing across the sky.
The next night M and I would be back on the brutality of duty. And many more after that. Her MD/PhD journey brought her from thette's Karolinska, mine from Ann Arbor, and for both of us, long yet is the road. But we would seize whatever escape we could manage, take any respite we could get, and enjoy, while we could, the majesty of music painted on an autumn evening's sky.