Tonight, tonight... Boy, boy, pretty boy... and other such showtunes excitement

Last night we had a perfectly delightful evening at Wolf Trap with the Boston Pops and Keith Lockhart. I would even go so far as to say it was magical in that I had a whole host of memories and emotions reawakened from deep within me.

Such as "Rhapsody in Blue." I love the free and easy melody that tightens and expands across the keyboard and up and down the scale and the convergence of instruments--brass, winds, strings, percussion. Ah, the good old days of the Timpview High School Orchestra and Terry Hill. We rehearsed and rehearsed to play this for state orchestra in Logan, Utah, sometime in the spring of 1991. Of course we took state (who wouldn't have with Sam Peery on the piano?), but I mostly remember studying madly for the AP US history test on the bus all the way up and all the way back with my nerdy orchestra friends, and laughing our heads off.

Then there were our various performances of "Rhapsody in Blue" while on our Eastern European tour. We performed it in Wencelas Square in Prague to a crowd of Czechs. We also performed it in the piazza of a small town somewhere in Slovakia--the streets were not flat there, and we had to figure out how to keep our music stand up and the piano from rolling. In the middle of his first solo piece, Sam discovered that the keyboard was 8 keys short and he had to improvise.

Then Keith Lockhart pulled out West Side Story... let's just say I couldn't sit still. My sisters and I used to dance and sing to the old record my mom had. I think Lisa even tried to write down all the words so she could memorize them (there were a few phrases in "America" that we could never figure out).

I took a Cinematic Adaptations of Literature class my last semester at BYU, and we studied Romeo and Juliet. We read the play, then watched both Zefferelli's film and West Side Story, and I became enamored with the choreographic adaptation of Shakespearean emotion.

When I lived in Arizona, Jennifer and I had a friend, Mikey, who would upon request do the "Boy, boy, pretty boy" snap song for us. We loved it!

When I lived in New York City, I was amazed to find out that the movie had been filmed where the Lincoln Center is today, and the neighborhood used to house thousands of lower class ethnic groups, who heavily protested the demolition for an upper class performing arts center that I had grown to love.

So last night was magical... from "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" to "Bring Him Home." I love show tunes!