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On Saturday, Sam, Burton and I made the 1 hour drive up to Barrie and knocked on the door of some people we’ve never met or even talked to other than through e-mail. The door opened and dogs growled and barked at each other. About 15 seconds later though, it was over. For the next two and a half hours straight, Burton and his brother, Gibson, wrestled and played as if they had never been separated.

Everyone had been wondering for the past week whether or not they would recognize each other as siblings, or even the same breed, but it was unmistakable that there was some kind of connection. They played exceptionally well and balanced, both taking turns to dominate and never needing any separating or intervention from us. They play, while at times quite animated, was very quiet for the most part.

Gibson was definitely taller and weighed more, but Burton seemed to be a little.. I suppose.. chubbier. I suppose it’s time to exercise him more! Likewise Gibson’s parents have vowed to feed him more! It was fun to discuss training progress, methods, similarities and differences between them. We’re definitely looking forward to future play dates!

It is “Seattle Celebrates Bernstein” season in Seattle (which strikes me as a little strange since Bernstein isn’t from nor really resided in Seattle, I don’t believe), so the theater I have season subscription to is putting on 2 classic Bernstein musicals, the first of which is “On the Town”.

I’ve only studied West Side Story (what Bernstein is most famous for) before, so I wasn’t sure what to expect. The musical definitely had a more classic feel to it, and it ended up being quite a funny comedy (A mixture of slapstick and witty humour). The songs felt classical with a slight touch of modernism, which really fits my taste in that it was easy to digest (not like Sunday in a Park with George) yet a little adventurous (e.g. the major 7th (I think) motive for “Oh well” in Act 2’s “Some Other Time” is quite angular and not classical). There were a few memorable songs as well (at least memorable enough that I can hum parts of it leaving the theater), such as “Carried Away”.

What is special about On the Town (and I suspect this is common for Bernstein’s musicals) is his heavy use of dance (probably because of Jerome Robbins) – it was pretty and at times felt like a ballet, and the genius in it is the dance sequences (nothing is sung) is used to advance the plot as well. So I thought that was quite fresh and clever.

The only downside was the plot was a little thin (although that’s somewhat expected for a slapstick-ish comedy). But overall the music, choreography and stage directing is quite well done, so:

I sang with my a capella group in concert last Saturday, and here’s the video.
Very glad that my face is overexposed (totally unintentional) so you can’t see who the soloist is for the first song :P.

My friend told me about this “little” Starfield concert that is happening up north, 20 minutes from Seattle. Tickets were $10 and since Starfield just released a new CD that I like, I figure I’d go and check it out. It ends up the concert is held at this semi-big Korean church in their gym – and there were a lot of Korean youngsters (high school or college, I can’t tell) attending, so it felt a little bit like… high school :P.

Anyhow, Starfield is stellar (har har) in their performance, although I have a feeling since it is a smaller venue they were taking it a little easy. I think they opened some of their new songs in a much lower key than their album version, and there were definitely some wrong notes here and there (hehe that’s how well I know their material). It was a shame that their projector wasn’t working out so they couldn’t display the lyrics and get more people to sing along with them (which might have been why they dropped the key in the first place), but they did manage to do a bunch of older material and other worship songs so everyone could participate.

I haven’t taken much photos with my SLR lately, so this was a good chance to practice; but I didn’t want to spend too much time editing and processing (and I wanted to enjoy the concert), so I only took a selected few. They seem to turn out quite nicely still with minimal processing – I’m quite happy with them (minus some mic stand focusing challenges, and expected graininess from high ISO). Here are some highlights:

Oh and as a bonus! We saw a local band called “New Heights” that opened for Starfield, and I noticed their guitarist looks a bit like sadd3j – maybe young sadd3j 😛 so I took a quick snapshot:

Burton looking VERY mischievous.