Hoisting an eyebrow

From Jennifer Foster, at WDAV at Davidson

College, in

w:st="on">North Carolina:

I was at a Sunday afternoon concert

at a small Episcopal church in town. (A local baroque cellist has a treasure

trove of early music friends from Berkeley

who come to town to perform from time to time.) The concert opened with Bach’s

Brandenburg Concerto No. 5. The harpsichord player, a mischievous looking

fellow named Henry Lebedinsky, was in the heat of

playing the daylights out of his extensive solo. Rather

style='mso-spacerun:yes'> than wallow in the kind of attention a

well-heeled classical music audience

owed him for his great talent and efforts, he turned his face

style='mso-spacerun:yes'> to us in the middle of one of the most

difficult passages, hoisted an eyebrow

and gave a crooked grin as if to say, "Impressive, isn’t it?"

style='mso-spacerun:yes'> It was like Bugs Bunny delivering a casual

aside or giving himself a manicure while everything around him is exploding.

Suddenly, we were all off the hook.

He gave us permission to perceive our concert-going experience differently.

class=GramE>A small gesture with grand implications.

Of course this is the kind of gesture — the kind of

communication between musicians and audience — that’s so often missing in

classical music. Many thanks to Jennifer for passing it on.

She herself embodies many things that classical music needs, and she’s figured

in this blog before, as loyal readers will remember:

href="http://www.artsjournal.com/sandow/2006/03/_not_so_passive.html">

style='font-size:10.0pt;mso-bidi-font-family:"Book Antiqua"'>here

and

href="http://www.artsjournal.com/sandow/2006/04/the_main_street_sessions.html">

style='font-size:10.0pt;mso-bidi-font-family:"Book Antiqua"'>here.