Since I was in choir all throughout high school, I still try to go to the concerts as often as I can. Sadly, this may be the last of them I might go to, because everybody I knew two years ago is graduating this year. This concert was also a special one, because Mr. Rhodes is moving away after this year! He had improved the choir program so much since he had first come to our school 7 or 8 years ago.

Our spring concerts are very long, and this was no exception. It took about three hours, but it was okay because I was sitting with all of my choir friends. The concert also included entertaining and crazy performances by the student-run groups Valhalla (all female) and Testostertones (all male). The members of the higher choirs also get together in groups and prepare farewell songs by themselves, and these songs are kept a surprise until the night of the concert. Mr. Rhodes takes no responsibility for any of these performances. :)

The choirs were very good, as usual. Our choral department always has so many talented musicians and leader-type people that make the program so great. This year, Mr. Rhodes had a lot of songs that had choreography in them, which was uncommon. I think he wanted to leave with a bang! At the end, all the choir alumni (even from 30 or 40 years ago) were called up to the stage, and we sang the school anthem. The stage was filled to the brim. After the concert ended, everyone was crying and hugging their friends on stage. Afterwards, we went out to dinner as a huge group. Some things never change. :)

Thursday, June 2, 2005, 7:30 p.m.
Northwest Auditorium, UCLA

I was invited to this culture show by my friend Soha, who was in the last dance act. It was a culture show put on by over 70 students of the UCLA Iranian Student Group, which was currently the most active student group on campus. The third annual culture show included dances with traditional Iranian costumes, skits, and musical performances.

This year's show had a special theme: the new generation. It was all about the problems and struggles faced by people of Iranian descent who had been born and raised in the United States. Since Iranian and Turkish cultures are similar, I could relate to a lot of the humorous skits which also urged people to think about how much one should preserve their own culture while living in another.

The dances were choreographed by the students themselves, also, and I could tell that putting on this show took hours of planning and practice from everyone. The show was much more entertaining than I had anticipated it.

Soha was good at her dance, too. :)

I went to this concert because Aimee, my friend from high school, was in the choir in the final movement of the Beethoven. My dad came along with me, too.

The auditorium was huge and we were sitting near the back. The concert was free andto the public, which meant that there were a lot of people there who weren't familiar with classical music concerts. Because of this, I had a hard time enjoying the music. From what I could hear, the orchestra was okay. It wasn't horrible, but it wasn't too exceptional. Most parts sounded dry to me. This could be because I was too distracted by the small children sitting behind us who never stopped talking and fidgeting. The orchestra had a few moments where some parts weren't together, but it also had some good moments.

Being a choir person myself, the performance I was looking forward to was the choral ending of the 9th Symphony. I'm familiar with it because I was in the choir in a performance we did last year. I didn't like the conductor's interpretation of some parts, though. For example, the Turkish march section was too fast for my tastes, and I could tell the tenor soloist had a hard time keeping up. The soprano soloist was a bit too loud and drowned out all the other soloists in the quartet. The choir's enthusiasm made up for all these things, though. Overall, I liked the performance.

I must tell you about the stupid audience. First of all, there were always people clapping between the movements. Let me say here that it's wrong to clap before the conductor's hands go down. At the end of any piece, the audience started clapping before even a second passed after the last note, and this is wrong. You need to give the music a few seconds to "end" after the last note - for it to all settle down and for the echoes to disappear.
I'd already mentioned the kids sitting behind us. There was also a couple sitting in front of us, who had their entire dinner during the first half of the concert. The crinkle of plastic bags and the smell of Caesar salad dressing and yogurt wafting toward us were quite distracting. There was also a girl next to me who got very impatient towards the end of the Beethoven, so she kept her hands poised, ready to clap at each pause in the music. AAaaahhh!!