Michael Kent Smith

Concert Recap

August 16th, 2008

As it turns out Armando López Valdivia was able to reschedule and play in the concert after all and it turned out to be just great. We got together on Wednesday night and cooked up some settings to improvise on. He decided to bring two violas de gamba (one a treble viol and the other a bass viol), a Hurdy Gurdy and two flutes.

Thursday evening I arrived at the museum an hour before the concert to get myself set up and acclimated to the space. Armando showed up shortly after me. At 6:30 they came and told me that there was a crowd waiting outside the museum and they wanted to let them in to avoid congestion in the street. I said, “fine” - it would be silly to leave them outside when they could come in and sit down. Like a dummy, I had forgotten my cds in the hotel and ran back to get them. It’s only 2 blocks away so it wasn’t a big deal. By the time I returned the seats were all filled and people were filing in to the standing room areas. I went into a room that functions as a dressing room (it’s really one of the exhibit galleries) to wait for showtime and collect my thoughts. When I came out at 7:00 the standing room area was elbow to elbow with people. I could hardly believe it! I played a set of nine solo pieces, eight on the guitar and one (”Reuben’s Train”) on the dulcimer. I played one of my brand new pieces that is yet untitled. It’s fast and blends some flamenco rasgueado strums with swirling pulloffs. I asked the audience to come up with any ideas for a title. At least a dozen people raised their hands at the end of the tune with suggestions. There were several good ones but one gentleman suggested “Caravana Espiral” (Spiral Caravan) which I kind of like.

The humidity was changing rapidly as a storm was rolling in and I had a heck of a time keeping the guitar in tune. By the last solo tune the rain had started to fall on the glass roof over the patio and made it difficult to hear myself. Since I was playing unamplifiied I imagine those in the back could barely hear anything. I invited Armando to the stage and we played our first piece which was very well received. Unfortunately, by the end of the tune the rain had turned into a torrential downpour and we couldn’t even hear our own instruments. We told the audience that we were going to wait a minute for the rain to abate before continuing but it turned into a 20 minute delay - the rain just kept pounding. I don’t think that even one person left during the delay. I’d like to think it was because they were digging the music so much (which they really seemed to be) but it also may have been because no one wanted to go out into the storm! In either case we had a full and very attentive house as we finished the concert. At the end we got a very warm ovation that surprised Armando as much as it did me. At the end of the show many people came up to talk and ask for autographs among them two little kids 6 and 9 years old who had sat with rapt attention through the entire concert and wanted me to sign their programs. The fellow who suggested the title “Caravana Espiral” came up to talk to me. It turns out he is from Columbia and is a big music fan and apparently well connected. He told me that if I were to come to Columbia he could organize a concert in a theater in Bogotá. Many people talk about things like that and are basically full of it but somehow I think this gentleman is for real. I hope so because Columbia is on my list of places to go. Many Americans think Columbia is some horribly dangerous place but if you don’t wander into the remote jungles where the FARC hangs out or stumble into bad neighborhoods in Bogotá, you’re not really in much danger. It’s just another load of BS that the American media continues to foist upon us.

Below are some photos from the show as well as three videos that a local painter shot. There’s some camera angles that may cause a bit of vertigo, but I’m glad she took the video. The roaring you hear in the background on the duet videos is the rain on the roof. Right after the videos were shot we had to stop the concert for a bit. The first of the duet videos is the piece “Small Boy” with Armando playing the viola de gamba. The second is a celtic flavored tune with Armando playing two recorders. The instrument in his lap is the hurdy gurdy but, unfortunately, he doesn’t play it during the video. The video of me playing solo is the previously unnamed piece that is now officially called “Caravana Espiral”.