Last night Denis and I drove to Columbia to see the symphony perform a handful of movie theme songs. We made it in time – arriving 15 minutes before showtime. Our seats were excellent and the Koger Center is a wonderful venue for live orchestras.
They played the “Looney Tunes Overture”, followed by the theme songs to such movies as The Magnificent Seven, Schindler’s List, The Great Escape, Harry Potter, ET, Raiders of the Lost Ark, and Star Wars. The emcee for the event was very funny but talked a LOT to fill in the time and make the show last longer. Afterwards we were disappointed that they didn’t add more MUSIC to the event (if the emcee had talked less that’s one song, and if they had shortened the 20-minute intermission by five minutes that could have been another one). SO many themes they could have done – something from Cinema Paradio, Jaws, Psycho, Rocky (just to name a few). The focus last night was definitely on John Williams although they could have done Bill Conti, Henry Mancini, Thomas Newman, Michael Kamen, and many others as well.
The treat of the event was that they were doing a fundraiser to raise money for the local arts council. They had 30 local artists use a violin and create an original piece of artwork. Then at the show last night they put those violins as well as photographic prints of the violins up for silent auction. There were two that I absolutely adored, but so did everyone else and the price quickly shot up to over $500 for those violins (in one case it went over $1,000). At the intermission we took another look and there were two that were in a more reasonable price range that I liked, and on a whim I put down a bid (after consulting with Denis, of course) and went back into the show.
Once the show was over, we went out and looked at the giant board of auction winners – and my lot number was there! I had won the violin! Denis said that I could consider that my birthday gift this year – which is fine by me because it’s lovely. I’ll post a picture of it tonight. I took one this morning with my cellphone but it came out all blurry because I had to be quick about it so the kids wouldn’t see it and start crying to hold it. To see all the violins, you can click here – mine is the one by Melissa Ligon.
We left Columbia and drove back to Rock Hill and grabbed a quick bite to eat at a local Denny’s (because IHOP was closed). Then it was back home by 11:15 p.m. All in all a wonderful evening of music, some support for semi-local artists, and decent grub.
And the babysitter assured us that the kids were great all night. Phew!
So glad it was an enjoyable evening! You need those date nights.