Arizona Real Estate Notebook

… terrible.

It was the worst I’ve heard since I started tagging along with Liz to the Phoenix Symphony in the mid 1990′s. (Dreams and Prayers of Isaac the Blind, Osvaldo Golijov.)

The most embarrassing performance, however, was several years ago and it was due to a similar misguided attempt to combine musical styles.

The guest soloist was a operatic singer and the director at the time had talked her into singing a blues or jazz piece. She did well as an operatic singer as far as I could tell but when she did the blues/jazz piece you just cringed. You could see in her face that she knew full well how bad it was but she had to go along with the director’s failed experiment. It felt a bit like the director was humiliating her in public. That had to be one of, if not the, most embarrassing performance of her life.

Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 4, on the other hand, was spectacular last night. You needed a seat belt to ride the third movement.