Associated Musings

That was the advice given to me by a friend upon hearing that I would be conducting in front of a live audience of 63,000 people tonight.  Another friend of mine (this one is also a conductor) joked “Don’t screw it up, or your career will be over.”  The ISO and I are hitting the road tonight to perform in what is for us a pretty unusual (but exciting!) venue – Lucas Oil Stadium, about a mile away from our home at the Hilbert Circle Theater.  We’ll be playing the national anthem before the Colts-Patriots game, which is the featured game on Sunday Night Football tonight nationwide.  Go Colts!  Unfortunately, SNF rarely shows the national anthem on their broadcast (they tend to opt for Faith Hill’s prerecorded rendition of the SNF theme song instead).  But we’re all psyched anyway to get to play for such an enormous and passionate live audience, and one that certainly includes many people who have never heard the ISO live before.  This is actually our second performance at Lucas Oil Stadium, though our first at a game – we also performed there in August 2008 as part of the opening ceremonies for the stadium.

I’ll leave you with one of my favorite versions of the national anthem.  Glenn Donnellan, a violinist with the National Symphony Orchestra in Washington, D.C., made an electric “violin” out of a baseball bat, and wrote his own arrangement of the Star-Spangled Banner to play on it.  Enjoy, and see you at the game!