Gil

They warned me.  Explained it all up front.  Go for it, they said.  Yeah, yeah, well worry about the sound if you want, but you're going to enjoy being close and upfront with Gil.  All this from the box office, advice to throw aesthetic caution to the winds and sit in the front row.

You don't need a degree in acoustical engineering to know better than to sit two meters from the knees and skirts and scuffed shoes and handkerchiefs of the San Francisco Symphony.  But when the other wheelchair spaces are full, and the only two remaining cost twice as much, you do consider sitting down front in row #A. So, what the hell.  There we were, early handing in our tickets to the guy at the door who explained, half apologetically, that the still-new-to-me Symphony Hall doesn't have much of a wheelchair route to the front row.  Never mind, there we were with the air conditioning ducts, asbestos-clad pipes and concrete floors, headed for the side door to the grand hall.

Inside, sure enough, we were close enough to easily stash a couple of sandwiches and cold drinks on our table, the stage.  Good thing this 14-year-old walked out and insisted he was the assistant conductor and was now going to tell us a little about Mendelssohn, but more about Beethoven.  And actually, it was quite entertaining.  Yes, Beethoven was a tortured guy, but he was also a show off.  And if you want to know why the last movement of the Eroica begins with a simple motif, that's it.  Beethoven's way of saying watch me take these couple of notes and wail.

So, with the 14-year-old gone, and after a trip back through the concrete underbelly of Davies Hall to the men's toilets, I was back in place and waiting for the big boys.  Here they were, Michael Tilson Thomas and Gil Shaham, ready to have a go at Mendelsohn's Violin Concerto.  Did I know it?  Oh, doubtless, I told myself when I ordered the tickets.  I just couldn't quite recall it.  But now it was all there, as soon as Shaham sliced into the piece, the familiar opening themes...with this unfamiliar guy being himself.

Gil is a fairly slight man, medium build, who was born far too recently in the US, spent much of his life in Israel, and at not much more than half my age, effortlessly sliding this exquisitely nuanced sound out of his wood and resin.  Mendelsohn kicks off with this in-your-face statement for solo violin, then briefly hands things over to the orchestra...at which point I couldn't take my eyes off Gil.  While Thomas and crew were doing their thing, Shaham was doing his.  Violin hanging inoperative by his side, knees bending, he was swaying maybe davening, with his body saying, yes, yes, this is too much to just stand stock still and wait for my cue.  Rock musicians, sometimes jazz guys, do a certain amount of bending and dancing about.  But this wasn't like that.  You could see it in Gil Shaham's face, open and childlike, amazed as some apostolic figure from Hieronymus Bosch.  Delighted and ecstatic and in the music, and let's bend and lean toward Thomas, cause he's in this too.  Until I straighten up and slide back into this bowing and fingering.  There's a lesson there for me.  Let go, let rip.