Yankee Doodle went to the symphony

Eric and I went to the symphony last night to hear Joshua Bell (and to try to get the Movers of Arabia out of our heads).

He was wonderful!

He was called back to the stage five times by the thunderous applause and finally agreed to do an encore. He said nothing - just raised his violin and launched into a piece in his typical highly animated fashion. Maybe a minute into his emotional performance it became clear: he was playing Yankee Doodle.*

This elaborate and at times gut-wrenchingly heartfelt rendition of Yankee Doodle went on for several minutes and afterward people erupted into even more thunderous applause; these people simply could not clap loud enough for Joshua Bell. I had the feeling that the audience sort of wanted to devour him whole. I didn't stick around for the special CD signing afterwards but I hope they had excellent security or Joshua's untucked black dress shirt was likely shredded from his "concert violinist bad boy" body before he was even fully seated in his chair.

"You know, he's making fun of us," Eric commented.

Yep. And we love it.


*This actually happens to be one of the songs that Emerson's musical "laptop" plays as well so, as it turned out, even the symphony was not a safe escape from horrible-baby-music-land.