I am so glad I went to see Verdi’s Requiem after all. In a strange sort of way, I think I’m glad I was by myself — I could focus on the music. And what music! The symphony, the chorus and all four soloists were in top form, and the acoustics at Laura Turner Concert Hall wrap the music all around you in a way that’s powerful and moving. I was torn between trying to read the supertitles and watch the expressions on the faces of the soloists versus just closing my eyes and getting lost in the music. (I frequently close my eyes when listening to really good music.)

Getting there was strange. I first parked in the wrong place — the parking garage under the SunTrust building as opposed to the parking garage across the street from, the bank. By the time I figured out what was going on, ran back to my car, got out of the first garage, and finally found a parking space in the second garage, I was scared I was going to cut it close getting to the concert. I was in such a hurry that I didn’t pay close attention to on which level I had parked, which meant I had to do some looking around at the end of the evening. I was covered in sweat by the time I got to the concert.

What a fabulous evening. I got another surprise when I got home, but I don’t want it to get lost and so I’ll make it into a separate post.

Advance tickets sales for the Symphony at the Celebration concert have been phenomenal, and we’re expecting a great crowd Tuesday night. Here, we see Nashville Symphony Assistant Conductor Kelly Corcoran at the Cascade High School theatre — where I once trod the boards as a thespian — rehearsing with Cascade’s band. I believe they are going to do the school proud.

It has been a stressful and unpleasant time at work, for reasons I won’t discuss here, but I have the diversion of looking forward to one of the high points of my year, which is less than a week away.

Dawn Holley, who chairs the steering committee of which I am a member, said today she believes advance ticket sales are going quite well. It looks like we’ll have a good crowd, and a much-improved out-of-town crowd due to better support from papers in surrounding communities.

I touched base with Cascade High School band director David Lucich today to make sure it was OK for me to drop by Monday afternoon, when Nashville Symphony assistant conductor Kelly Corcoran, who will lead Tuesday’s concert, stops by to work with the Cascade band on the two numbers which Cascade will play in tandem with the Nashville Symphony: “The 1812 Overture” and “The Stars and Stripes Forever.” I want to get a photo of her working with the kids so that I can run it on the front page Tuesday as last-minute promotion for the concert.

I am ashamed to say I don’t own any Cascade shirts right now. I went by a sporting good store today to buy one, but they didn’t have anything in XXL. I found a nice faded-orange golf shirt at Wal-Mart; it doesn’t specifically say “Cascade,” but I think it will be quite appropriate to wear to the concert (which we try to promote as being casual and family-friendly). Maybe I could make a badge to wear on the shirt.

The Nashville Symphony announced its 2008-2009 schedule today. Even though it’s more than a year from now, I may have to try to figure out some way to attend this pops concert, either through my symphony connections or by getting my parents to get an extra ticket for that night’s concert when they make their reservations for next year. (They have had a ticket package with the symphony for several years now.)

My brother and I went to see Riders In The Sky at a taping of their public radio show, “Riders’ Radio Theatre,” many years ago at TPAC. Here’s how long ago: their guest star for one of the two episodes taped that night was a young up-and-coming country star. Michael and I looked at each other and said something like, “Wow — he’s good.”

His name was Garth something-or-the-other.

Well, I suspect that my fellow Mountain T.O.P. board member Sally Chambers has summed it up far better than I can hope to do. (I didn’t know Sally was going to be there, and I’m sorry I missed seeing her.)

What can I say about Handel’s “Messiah” that hasn’t been said by so many others over the years? It’s a glorious, reverent retelling of the Gospel story, with music and art equal to the truth of the tale.

Thursday night was my first “Messiah,” so I have nothing to compare it to, but I thought it was a fabulous performance. All four soloists were great, but soprano Awet Andemicael was particularly so, at once precise and emotional. Even when she wasn’t singing, she seemed not like she was waiting for a cue but like she was lost in the music herself.

I’ve blogged on previous occasions about Schermerhorn Symphony Center’s wonderful acoustics, and they certainly enhanced this experience. If you hear something like the “Hallelujah” chorus through the little speakers in your TV, you’ve not really heard it. In a live performance, especially in this venue, the sound is so much brighter and there are so many different layers to it. If you think you don’t like classical music, you’ve never heard it performed live.

I am no musician, and am very uninformed about composers and styles and what have you. I don’t know what I’m listening to without reading the program notes. But I know the joy of sound that a concert like this one can create.

Some people look at the Grand Canyon or the vastness of space and find proof of a Creator in their beauty, which is quite appropriate. I think that a work like “Messiah” functions the same way. Mrs. Rittenberry, the fourth member of our party Thursday night, is a math teacher, and technically the score to a musical composition can be expressed as just a series of formulae. But to hear something like this in its majesty, it just gives me the awesome sense of God giving one human being the ability to compose it, giving others the ability to perform it, and giving us all the ability to hear it and be moved.

Well, I skipped covering a school board meeting to go hear Handel’s “Messiah” tonight in Nashville, and ended up running into a school superintendent anyway.

During intermission, as we were stretching our legs, my mother suddenly called out, “Mike! Mike Harris!”

Sure enough, it was my cousin, Clarksville / Montgomery County school superintendent Michael Harris, with his wife Debbie. They were sitting just a few rows ahead of us; we were in the center section and they were in the left section. I’d swapped e-mails with Mike just a month or six weeks ago, but it’s been ages since I’ve seen him or Debbie in person. They’re doing great.

The concert was phenomenal — I’ll post more about it tomorrow, perhaps (it’s already past my normal bedtime as I write this). My parents, of course, enjoyed it as they do every year, and the fourth member of our party, Mrs. Rittenberry, a friend of ours from church, had a wonderful time as well.

It was appropriate to run into Mike at a performing arts event — the very first real play I ever attended, when I was, I guess, in sixth grade or junior high school, was Mike’s senior play at Smyrna High School. It was “Camelot,” and he was King Arthur. (He has a wonderful singing voice.) I was so proud!