Today I started with the usual Sunday morning volunteer gig cooking at the St. Augustine's meal program. I like making the pancakes. This was an extra-special morning though because we also had a performance by the saxophone choir! It was an ensemble of 8 saxophones (2 each soprano, alto, tenor, and bass I think) plus a drummer and a pianist. I was very impressed by the care and restraint shown by the drummer. He made sure he backed up the music without ever overwhelming it. He even played the snare with a brush at one point! Here's the YouTube version of the song I liked best (Chasing Cars by Snow Patrol). It was actually a lot better with saxophones and without lyrics, but you get an idea of the harmonies which were gorgeous this morning. They stood all around the room for this song so music came from every direction. I'm afraid I didn't think to take my camera, so you only get verbal pictures. They played a concert Saturday evening too which I sadly forgot about, probably because I was distracted by the bike ride and the sunset. But I caught a little of it Sunday morning so that was very nice.
Here's a little background info on the concert project:
Connie Friego's ROC Ensemble features eight saxophones, one jazz piano and one percussionist playing songs of Michael Jackson, Stevie Wonder and Radiohead!
Ms. Friego received a small grant from the Friends of Southwest DC (FOS), a nonprofit organization which supports educational, community development and charitable activities in the city's southwest quadrant. Last year, she had received a grant from FOS for her quartet to play a similar musical residency in the community and it was so well received that she applied and received a second one in 2011.
Also, Connie Friego is a former resident, July 2009 to August 2011, of Southwest, and for two years now she has organized these free concerts for the enjoyment by all residents of SW. The ROC Ensemble will also play early Sunday morning for the breakfast mainly served to homeless people at St. Augustine's.After that Elizabeth, a friend from HUD, and showed her around the neighborhood a little because she is looking for a new place to live and is thinking about Southwest. We had to go see the Titanic Memorial statue because it is just so mind-boggling. With soooo much cultural baggage on display.
Then this afternoon I met Chelsea at the National Building Museum. I suggested it because Tom and Linda said it was so nice and there is an exhibit on display right now called "Unbuilt Washington" about the serious and not-so-serious designs that were proposed but never built in this city. Including the Lincoln ziggurat. But actually we never ended up seeing the exhibit because they were flying model airplanes in the main atrium and it was really fun to watch. Again I forgot my camera though. Sorry about that. We'll just have to go back another day to see the actual exhibit.
Anyway the planes were balsa wood and plastic models, one to two feet long mostly. The building is almost 5 stories high with the entire central core open from the ground to the roof and galleries you can walk around the first three levels. There are six huge pillars with highly ornamented tops and windows all the way up. It is really light and open. Apparently it was originally built as the record storage and office space for the US pension department in 1880. It was the green building of the time too with "healthful light and air" for the clerks. They even had document rails around the edges (rather like Paul's meat rails in the cooler) which would be used to slide baskets of documents back and forth. It had to be built of brick so it would be fireproof to protect the pension documents.
They were flying airplanes all over this space. One end was the rubber-band-powered section where, I think, they were having contests to see who could stay in the air longer. Those planes were adjusted so they flew up and up in big circles. The other end was electric planes which would buzz around and do loop-de-loops as they were actually steerable. It wasn't clear if they were having any kind of contest or just having fun. There was even a dragonfly with flapping wings and a Nemo-fish blimp. That was pretty cool; it was an oblong helium balloon, about 2 feet long, painted like a clown fish with attached fins and a tail. It had a small weight on a rail along its belly that could slide fore and aft to point the nose up or down. The weight was adjusted to just a hair less than neutral buoyancy for today's air pressure. All this meant that Nemo slowly sank when his tail wasn't moving. However the driver could slide the weight back to point the nose up and flap the tail back and forth which generated just enough of a force to make the balloon rise. It could also turn side to side. So it was really fairly maneuverable in a slow and stately way. The electric planes were more zippy and exciting but the rubber band ones were really meditative and relaxing to watch, particularly the larger ones which leisurely spiraled up toward the light.
All in all that was a wonderful time at the museum and we had a good talk as well. Chelsea is another 2011 PMF at SAMHSA.
