Rachael Sage

Martin and I went to see Rachael Sage, one of my favorite performers. It was no small feat finding this concert, which was inexplicably part of the monthly Orlando Folk Music meeting. It was originally advertised as being at a diner in Osteen (wherever that is) and then at Lieu Gardens, but it turned out to be at a private home on Lake Ivanhoe. The home featured an upstairs art gallery which proved to be a good performance space. About thirty people showed up, which was basically a full house. As far as I could tell, three of us knew who Rachael Sage was (including Martin, who didn’t know two days ago). The rest seemed to be the regular folk music society members, who, surprisingly, seemed to mostly be retirees.

The afternoon began with a guitar duo who played mediocre folk/bluegrass/blues for a half hour. I presume this is the usual fare for this club. Then Rachael Sage came on, solo, and played piano and sang for two 45 minute sets. I was concerned that her music–which is certainly not folk, but rather complex contemporary alternative–would not be well-received, but the crowd was very enthusiastic. She has a great personality, and shared lots of stories about herself and the songs, and didn’t take things too seriously, interspersing her lyrics with comments to the audience, and also the owners’ dog, who kept strolling through!

Her set list was a dream. Essentially she played my entire five-star Rachel Sage playlist, drawing upon, as near as I could tell, all nine of her albums. At intermission I asked for my favorite, Jane’s Demitri, and she noodled around with it, but couldn’t quite remember the details, but she told my that next time, if I posted the request to Facebook, she’d practice it in advance. Wow.

This was a wonderful concert, and I felt guilty that it only cost $12, and that I already own all nine of her CDs, so couldn’t buy anything.

Mystery Fruit

The ugly tree in the backyard has pretty flowers on it. Linda planted this cutting a few years ago, with the promise that each branch would grow a different kind of fruit. Mostly it grows dead twigs. But this branch has produced a couple of pieces of fruit in the past, plums I think. Usually the squirrel sneaks into the screen room and runs off with them.

City Fire Oven and Bar

Tonight Linda an I went to a pre-opening test run of a new restaurant by the family that created Pebbles, Harvey’s Bistro and Manuel’s. For a first night, things ran remarkably smoothly. It was fun to try some of the dishes we used to love at Pebbles, and we had a chance to provide some detailed feedback to the owner, who provided us with a tour. The decor is nice, with romantic lighting, 1890’s light fixtures and photos, and an inviting looking bar. Nothing about the service or the food would have tipped us off that this was their first night. It looks like a successful concept, and we wish them well for their opening this Monday.

Crepes

Linda fixed crepes tonight, what a creative use of frozen leftovers! Spinach Souffle, curry chicken, and ratatouille. Accompanied by two different Adobe Road zinfandels that happened to arrive today, and a BV chardonnay.

Wine Competition

This was my 20th year judging wines at the Florida State Fair International Wine Competition. There were about 1269 wines from 34 different states, with 25% coming from California.

The event begins Wednesday evening, at the judges’ dinner, when we taste last year’s double gold medal winners. Then, on Thursday and Friday, the 24 judges form eight panels that score about 100 wines each day. This year, for dinner on Thursday, John Henline and I tried someplace new, Tokai Sushi, that was nearby, quite good, and reasonably priced.

There’s also time to see a bit of the fair, which is a strange mix of livestock, competitions ranging  from horticulture to dancing, flea market, and carnie midway. These miniature cows are used as a tax dodge, to achieve agricultural zoning of two head of cattle per acre without requiring much food. They don’t have T-bones, just Teeny-bones.

Saturday is the Best of Show tasting, when the best double gold medal winners are all entered into a popularity contest. It takes a lot of glasses!

This year’s winners in the red and white categories were both from California wineries: Moonstone and Ventana.

Of course, no trip to Tampa is complete with a visit to Berns, and this year I managed two. On Friday night I went with John, Al, and Keith, and we tried ’64 Vosnee-Romanee, ’64 Cote-Rotie, ’73 Inglenook Charbono, ’74 Inglenook Petite Sirah, and ’76 Mondavi Pinot Noir.

On Saturday I met up with Linda and Martin to see Billy Elliot at a matinee. This was my fifth time seeing that show, three times in London and once in Chicago. It’s been interesting to watch it gradually transform itself for American audiences, with minor changes here and there to make it more understandable. An excellent show, and very well received by the audience. I couldn’t help reflect on the absence of children in the audience, even though the cast is mostly children. This was quite different from London, but here the show’s four letter vocabulary is evidently a bit too much for most parents.

After the show Linda, Martin and I went to Berns, where we enjoyed the best wine of the week, a 1959 Chambolle-Musigny, along with a 1980 Cote-Rotie and a 1982 Tanbark Zin(!) recommended by our waiter. By chance I had the same table and waiter both nights, and also by chance Ron and Bev were there both nights, in another room. The Zin made an interesting blind challenge when I sent a glass to Ron, and he passed with flying colors.

West Side Story

The touring production of West Side Story visited Orlando this week, and Linda and I saw it on our season ticket subscription to Broadway Across America. Of all the hundreds of musicals we’ve seen, it’s curious that neither of us had ever seen this show onstage. Of course, we’ve seen the movie, but the show’s complex orchestral score must be beyond the talents of regional theaters, so we had to wait for this revival.

Surely no other fifty-year-old musical stands up as well as this one. Even today the orchestration is fresh, cutting edge, and unlike anything else. And the choreography is simply the best we’ve seen, easily outdoing other famous “dance” musicals such as Oklahoma. The extremely young troupe put incredible energy into each number, and it was easy to believe they were two teen gangs; they were!

The voices in this show were good, particularly Michelle Aravena as Anita. (We saw her on Broadway in 2006 in A Chorus Line.) Ali Ewoldt as Maria was also good. Sadly, the lead for Tony was sick, and his understudy wasn’t at the level of the other performers; he seemed more like he belonged in a (good) school production of the show.

Amazingly, the Bob Carr acoustics failed to defeat the sound engineer, perhaps because the levels were lower than most shows. As a result, the orchestra sounded great. Most of the lyrics were also clear, although America was inexplicably unintelligible.

This show mixes fairly extensive Spanish dialogue and lyrics with English, which works great and adds to the believability of the antagonistic relationship between the Sharks and Jets. Because the plot is conveyed through the action, no translation is needed. An excellent show.