Music and the city

Ah, faithful reader: you came back, and we love you for it. Willing, apparently, to forgive three weeks of silence, you steered your browser here, and for that, we're grateful. (Or perhaps your Google search for more information on the soundtrack of Pinocchio brought you here - in which case, we're also grateful, and apologetic). We have a vague sense, in fact, that your generosity deserves an ode, a paean, a hymn of thanks. But our research department tells us that in fact you probably don't want odes. You want - well, you want cute pictures of Cleo. And maybe a related anecdote or two. So we'll try to respect your wishes, and instead of offering airy enconia or excuses for the recent lack of original material here (elephant ivory; art and destruction), we'll get down to business.

To Cleo, that is, and to fatherhood, and music. Did I tell you that we attended, two and a half weeks ago, the world premiere of a piece of music written about Baltimore. Indeed: it was part of a program assembled by the Walters Art Museum, which had commissioned Judah Adashi, a 30-something American pianist and composer, to write a work that was somehow inspired by the Book of Fayyum, which is now on display at the museum. So Adashi got to thinking, and the result was the four-movement Inner City, an original piece that consisted largely of pensive, jazz-inflected piano and an overlaid pre-recorded landscape of industrial and urban sounds.

Cleo and I took our seats early in the balcony of the half-filled auditorium, and spent some time testing the bounciness of the folding seats. We thought about how shiny the drum kit on the stage was, and wondered if Adashi would use it (he wouldn't; it was for a later piece). And then we watched and listened, as Adashi began to play: deliberately but emotionally, and imparting a sense that he was trying to channel some energy of the city into the sounds that drifted towards us.

Did he succeed? Well, we were both engaged - for the first two movements, at least, at which point Cleo began to squirm a bit, and we discretely headed for a door. 'What did you think?' I asked her- and learned that Cleo felt that the music 'wasn't as interesting as some music.' All right. But I will say that as we left the museum to join L. for lunch, the city that surrounded us now felt colored, in turn, by the music of the piano that seemed almost to accompany it.