Quoting Michael Loo to Nancy Backus on 12-24-18 10:23 <=-

It was at a famous place in Geylang, I think,
that our table ordered butter prawns and got
the other - at that point I almost became a
cereal killer.

With due cause... ;)

"Godson of Vice-Chancellor runs amok; Kix waiters
and Cap'n Crunches errant restaurant chef."

That's one way to get one's 15 minutes of fame.... ;)

So you must have had the practical equivalent
of Home Ec, either that or a modicum of good
sense. One important function of society is
to protect those who don't have good sense.

I suppose my parents did give somewhat of a practical equivalent... and generally explained why something should be done a certain way...

Sounds like. That's what parents are supposed
to do but in many cases don't.

They were both teachers.... Daddy particularly....

That's a rather high percentage of rotten eggs.... I don't think my little sister had anywhere near that (in fact, never heard she'd had
any rotten eggs) back when she was raising chickens.... :)

It was a dangerously high percentage, and
if the owners weren't nice, they probably
would have been shut down long since.

I'm a little surprised that they hadn't at least done something to try
to get and keep that percentage a lot lower.... just for their own
health and safety....

I thought it was appalling. myself.

Indeed.

Colleges often don't sustain decent orchestras
any more.

Other than colleges with music schools, I'd not expect that much
support for orchestras by colleges anyway, though.... maybe Ivy
League, though...?

A lot of the big state schools have or sponsor them
(the University of Arkansas sponsored ours and a
student orchestra as well, with some slopover of
personnel, for example; granted, such institutions
often have (generally wind-heavy) music departments
of some eminence. I was also thinking of the HRO,
so your guess is also correct.

Which is the HRO...?

Do bear in mind that life in general costs more
than it used to. Two C-notes isn't that much of
a stretch any more. A handful of donors looking
for big deductions, and there you are.

Well, yes, there is that.... Used to be that for a $60 pledge you'd get
the card that gave you all sorts of discounts in the area... now that's
for $120 and up....

Used to be you'd get a gift for any contribution
at all.

You still get the program guide for any contribution, but generally the thank-you gifts (here, anyway) start at $60... The fancy ones are for
very fancy pledges....

Does NY appreciate her touch better the second time around...?

I don't know the circumstance behind her leaving
but was given to understand that LA paid her a
real corporation CEO salary, and New York had to
come up with a big payday to get her back.

And they figured out that they'd lost out on something good when she was lured away from them... :)

Cost-benefit analysis no doubt.

Could be.

I've heard some pretty fine performances by
less than stellar groups. Patient coaching and
lots of rehearsal can go a long way but is
economically unfeasible for upper-grade
professional groups.

And I've heard some barely ok ones from some other less than stellar groups... which shall remain unnamed.... :) Where would you place Buffalo.... that's another one that shows up on Symphony Cast
regularly... and on the regular radio programs, too...

I got a callback for Buffalo in the '70s but had
decided to stay in Massachusetts by the time it
had decided that. I figure if that was so great a
group, it wouldn't have bothered, given my state
of playing at the time. When Foss conducted it, it
was pretty decent, not great. Later on, it wasn't
substantially better than various groups I did play
in. Maybe top 40.

OK.

Ah, yes, Milwaukee.

That's the one that was on tonight... ;)

What was the program, and how did they do?

Mendelssohn: A Midsummer Night's Dream (Overture, Nocturn and Scherzo), Jalbert: Violin Concerto, and Vaughn Williams: A Sea Symphony. They did creditably... :)

Who's Jalbert?

Dunno... It was listenable to, at least... I'm guessing somewhat modern, though....

The RPO is, I think, a service between the RPO and WXXI, with the musicians donating their performance... But for the others, we are
always reminded during pledge drives that the broadcasts are expensive.... dunno how much gets back to the particular orchestra...

I presume that the musicians' union got a good
talking-to at some point regarding outreach and
finances and such.

One would expect... There appears to be actually quite a lot of
cooperation amongst all the various arts groups locally...

The way Boston does it is to put a vast amount
of money into the pension fund, which is fairly
robust, though that of the musicians' union as a
whole is on the borderline of liquidation. There
are a few moments here and there that I wish I'd
tried more seriously for a big orchestra career.

And then you come to your senses, eh....?

Did you have a starring or a supporting role...?

The former.

Harder to hide.... Was the imperfection obvious to all, or just mostly
to yourself....?

No, except the composer was there.

And presumably would know what he'd intended for you to play... explains
why you'd never set eyes on it previously... was it a premiere...?

ttyl neb

... Despite my promising abilities as a beach bum I got a job.

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