Emmanuel Ax

 An interesting way to spell one's last name for Emmanuel Ax, a famous piano player from Ukraine who often shows up onstage with Yoyo Ma and other famous classical musicians. Well he showed up tonight at a concert as the star of the show, and he rocked it. Very few instruments command as much attention as the piano... Ax didn't swing his bow wildly like many violinists MJ and I have seen (Ray Chen) or have anything terribly distinctive, but the Brahms piece just rang out......plus the Schubert Serenade solo he played as an encore. What I noticed tonight, though, like most nights at a classical music concert, is how locked in everyone is for a 2-hour orchestra concert. It's one of the most polite audiences in the world: a classical music concert. Everyone applauds furiously when the conductor and even the first violinist steps onto the stage indicating the beginning of the concert, and then everyone dutily SHUTS UP. And they look at the screen unflinchingly, without getting distracted in an era of cell phones and online connectivty. I looked around the hall and everyone had their eyes pointed directly ahead......except for one guy in the rear orchestra seating who fell asleep of course, in full view of everyone else (good reason never to sit there). Everyone even had the presence of mind to cover their coughs and sneezes and everything else until after the piece ended, or at least between movements in between a piece. Remarkable discipline, one of the only places in the world now you can get that in public places: airplanes, buses, subways, restaurants: there's always someone doing something objectionable, or weird, or socially unacceptable, and MJ will surely catch it. Even in movie theaters there's always one or two bad apples making comments or being loud ruining it for everyone, or museums where someone's standing too close to the art, touching the art, or letting kids run around a Richard Serra maze-like sculpture. They save the standing for the standing ovation at the end, which was reciprocated today by Ax giving the above-mentioned encor performance. I was impressed and proud of the classical music crowd, a crowd I've grown up with and learned to appreciate. 

I may have been impressed also by the Chinese food I had during intermission; for some reason the local Chinese restaurant MJ and I have always desired but it's on the other side of town from us was hosting a food event at the concert hall and had food for sale later, and it's the only time ever MJ and I had Mapo Tofu and Veggie spring rolls, or any other kind of Chinese food, at a music concert. I guess I'm easily impressed, and the mapo tofu was good. 

I sure do wish Emmanuel Ax will come up on a Jeopardy question one day: I now have the 74-year-old man imprinted in my mind. I find that I do well with names of people because usually I associate them with a specific thing or accomplishment, or I connect them to a picture, and the visual image helps me remember better (although I still have trouble remembering the names of people I meet at a party). The names of specific tools, objects, furniture, rooms in a house, cheeses, clothing items, and other commonplace items though.....I have a really tough time remembering and inherently knowing, because I grew up in a household of Chinese people who didn't use those terms for any of the commonplace items around me! (convenient excuse, but it is a reason). Today I had a hard time in Celebrity Jeopardy! (the easiest version of Jeopardy!) coming up with a fulcrum that could be used as a bar to lift a car (answer: lever) or the type of Dutch cheese that looks like a wheel and has a red band around it (Gouda). I really need to know what stuff are called.