Another symphonic evening

Dave is back in town, and we’re going to see the first night of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra’s 8 Days in June series. The overall theme of the event is “The Power of Change.” Tonight’s program is all classical, Mozart’s 41st Symphony (“The Jupiter”) and Holst’s “The Planets,” under the banner “Spiritual Progression.” Other nights in the series will include concerts in different genres of music and spoken word as well as art. The Toronto Symphony’s music director Peter Oundjian is the director of the festival, and he brings CBC Radio 2 host Tom Allen to do some bits of narration and pre-concert exposition. We went to one of the nights last year and it was very worthwhile.

The thing about tonight is, there is a severe thunderstorm watch up for the area as a cold front is going through—the cold front that most recently laid waste to Iowa and Wisconsin. Perhaps Grofé’s Grand Canyon Suite would be appropriate? It has an orchestral thunderstorm in the middle of it. I’m just hoping we don’t have a real thunderstorm in the middle of either of the pieces of music tonight.