'Tis the Season

Sachi plays trombone in the Oahu Civic Orchestra. If you have a magnifying glass and care, you can see him in the back row, on the right, next to the Euphonium player. Sunday, the orchestra played at a local mall. Held the audience of shoppers in their hand. I ran around trying to figure out how to use my new digital camera, upstairs and down, and finally had to dash into an electronics store because the 32 MB picture card that had come with the camera would hold only about eight photographs. I bought a 2 GB card at Radio Shack for about $25, and dashed back out onto the mezzanine overlooking the mall's center court to snap more photos of the orchestra.

The orchestra is pretty good. Violins are a little weak, and, being so high-pitched and squeaky, you always hear them. But, the orchestra rises to grand heights with loud, boisterous pieces.

They played again, last night, Monday, at the auditorium of a huge high-rise senior citizens' housing project near downtown Honolulu. The place was bleak. The auditorium was a linoleum'd multipurpose room lit by life-sapping fluorescent lights, low wattage ones. The whole complex comprises six 15-story buildings, but only about 20 people showed up for the performance. The orchestra outnumbered the audience, and the elders who did show up sat rigidly in their folding chairs, staring straight ahead. No toe tapping. No jiving. No head nodding or finger snapping. It was as if someone had sat them in front of a newscast made up of nothing but baseball statistics. I wondered if they'd always been like that, or that is just what happens when you get old.

The orchestra's got one more gig, and then Sachi's got another with the big band he plays with, and then, I guess, the holidays will be upon us and they can rest.