Yes, I'm Alive...

...I've just been working on some projects that required my spare time, but those are done now, so here I am again.

Last night, my husband and I traveled to Opelika for "Classical Savion," a performance matching Savion Glover's amazing FEET to the amazing music of diverse classicals composers like Vivaldi, Bach, Dvorak, Bartok, and even Sousa (albeit a jazz rendition).

The first part of the program was Vivaldi's Four Seasons, and for our money, we could have left after this and been sufficiently wowed. The interplay of tapping feet with the lyrical artistry and intensity of Vivaldi was perfect. Glover "played" with the musicians, and "played" with the audience, and served as a congenial link between those two.

After a 3 minute break, he appeared back onstage, and attempted a similar marriage with Bach's Brandenburg Concerto and selections from Bartok and Dvorak. Well, this is where things got slightly less interesting -- these didn't work quite so well, and there was a sense that it was slightly forced.

Following a 4 minute break, he once again took the stage, this time introducing each of the 11 fabulous musicians sharing the stage, and engaged in an improvisational "conversation" with each of them in turn. Some of these moments were just awe-inspiring, but others were truly flat -- and where he had played to the audience so successfully in the first segment, now it felt like the audience was shut out. So intimate did these "conversations" become between feet and instrument, it felt like those of us in the audience were listening to a series of inside jokes, and therefore were missing something.

All of this ended with a stunning jazz rendition of "Stars and Stripes Forever" that began tediously, but built to a thrilling conclusion.

Where the program worked flawlessly, I felt like I was hearing things in familiar music I'd never heard before; where it didn't work so well, I felt frustrated knowing how many other engaging compositions could have been used to match his gifts.

But I'm so glad we went, so glad to have been witness to a nearly sold-out venue of every sort of person you can think of, all being swept up in the artistry of a singular talent.