Music at KAUST hits a high note!

What do a 14-person gamelan orchestra made up of Indonesian grad students, a couple playing an apparently well-known Chinese violin double concerto, and sundry classical chamber groups all have in common? They were all wonderful participants in KAUST's first community-wide music concert, an event heard earlier this week by about 250 grateful and impressed campus residents, many of whom, by the end of the evening, suddenly realized that there is more than ample musical talent right here on campus, thank you!

In fact, the gamelan group played a beautiful rendition of Edelweiss, giving The Sound of Music (my favorite movie of all time) a special spin, while the classical groups, many accompanied by one of the apparently very few pianos on campus, had to withstand notes from an instrument that could easily have benefitted from the attention of the piano tuner who never showed. Oh well. Beware of pianos needing to be moved just before concerts...

The concert was slated to begin at 6:45, after prayer time, and had to be over by 8:20, well before the next prayer time. Indeed, if you're one of those who's worried about attending concerts that drag on and on, then an evening concert in Saudi Arabia could be the answer to your problems :).

More concerts are being planned, one of which your humble author will be performing in next month. Now that the ice has been broken, musicians are literally coming out of the woodwork. A mother whom we'd chatted briefly with at the beach only last weekend, revealed to a clarinet-playing colleague who had just performed that she is a flutist with PhD in musical performance! The next day I saw another colleague, our school counselor, walking out of his office and toward the music room toting a violin, which I'd never seen him carry.

I'm beginning to get the feeling that we're actually part of a large music conservatory! Maybe we've been misinformed all this time and this is really King Abdullah University of Strings and Troubadours?!

Thanks for reading,

David