To celebrate the University of Minnesota Northrop Auditorium’s 80th anniversary season a concert was performed on Friday by three-hundred students from the School of Music’s Symphony Orchestra and Combined Choirs. The piece was Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9, Op. 125 “Choral.” The event was sold out and by the time I got tickets all the good seats were taken, so my recording suffered significantly. I was located near the front, but as far as possible to stage left. This left me in front of the ancient speaker system used to amplify the concert. There was also loud ventilation and the crowd ambiance seemed to collect in my corner of the space. Never-the-less the concert was thoroughly enjoyable, but it’s unlikely that I’ll do much listening to my ragged bootleg version. Here’s the orchestra tuning their instruments.
U of M Orchestra Tuning
Wednesday, April 22, 2009 was a beautifully sunny day in Minneapolis. This quarter my schedule includes a three hour break, which I usually use for catching up on curriculum, ACB entries or meeting with students, but this time I let Spring fever take hold and got on my bike a rode around one of my favorite city lakes. There’s a nice spot on the lake where I sometimes read or take an afternoon nap. Unfortunately just across the lake from my spot was a work crew using a jackhammer to break up a cement driveway. If you can’t beat ‘um, join ‘um right? Having my PCM-D50 along, I finally gave up on the idea of a few Zs and rode over to the action to make a recording. It took a minute to get the levels right, but I think they were going to be at it all day, so there was plenty of time for a good long recording. Here’s a few passes of the jackhammer engaged and splitting concrete.
Thursday was my first outing with