Happy Hour...Orchestra Style

Yesterday was my beautiful wife’s birthday.  We celebrated by having a nice dinner with her dear friend Aubrey and her boyfriend.  Aubrey is a great friend of Steffani’s and I thought it would be nice for them to reconnect for the first time since our wedding.  We all shared a lot of laughs and ended the night with a nerf gun war/target practice of sorts in Aubrey’s home.

Tonight however, was when I gave her an actual birthday gift.  I had been planning it for a while once I knew we’d be in Indianapolis for her birthday.  Last month I spent some time on the interwebs trying to plan something fun in Indy.

I ended up choosing a night at the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra.  When I booked the tickets I was happy to pay what I felt was a reasonable price considering it was going to be a trio and not a full orchestra.

Do you ever have those moments where you are pleasantly caught off guard?  Earlier tonight was one of those moments.  We arrived to the concert early to get appetizers and drinks since this was part of their Happy Hour concert series.  Then we went up to the mezzanine to get good seats and wait for the show to start.

As I looked onto the stage I found it odd that they had a bunch of chairs set up since it was only going to be three people playing.  Turned out I had misread the concert description or more likely skimmed it like men usually do and neglected to realize it was a trio that was backed up by a full orchestra.  It was such a pleasant surprise.  A surprise for Steffani all the way around and a surprise for me that the trio would be backed up by a full orchestra.

They had a young conductor who had blended classical music with contemporary that resulted in an intoxicating cocktail of melody that one couldn’t help but tap their toe to with a smile on their face.  I thoroughly enjoyed that concert.  It had been a long time since I’d been to the orchestra.

Pablo Picasso is quoted as saying, “Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.”  His words rang true tonight as we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves.  Have you ever been to a concert or had some amazing experience where you just kind of lost yourself, if even for just a moment?  That was what happened to me tonight.  The everyday stresses of life fade into the background as you find yourself caught up in the moment.  I would like to have more moments like those.  

Best of all, these tickets were very affordable, much more so than other places I looked at.  Come to find out, the ISO had sponsors who helped put on the show.  Hence the Happy Hour part of it.  There were appetizers and drinks provided by sponsors of the show.  They did a little plug for the sponsors towards the end of the show.  Many people think advertising can ruin a show, myself included.  This didn’t ruin the show one bit.  It was refreshing somehow due to how the trio talked about the sponsors naturally while teasing one another about slowing down to speak more clearly.  

Pretty sure I nailed this birthday present, Leslie Knope style  :)  Two thumbs up, Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra, two thumbs up.