Photos from the past few days: [see some photos]

I’m at Geoff’s place in SF right now, connected through the slow connection my cell phone gives me. :) The quartet flew in from Calgary today and performed with their new cellist, Chris Costanza (for the first time in public), for the Stanford Sophomore College program. They played Ravel’s String Quartet and Schostakovich’s Quartet No. 8, and they were both wonderful, as expected. :) A surreal moment: a question one of the kids asked Geoff personally afterward about a particular E played in the third movement. He said that he wondered why Geoff had played it on the low side, stating that he could hear it both on the low side and on the high side. (Uh… Whut?) I think it was the same guy who asked why the quartet tuned some of the lower strings flat. It might have been a good question, had the quartet really tuned flat. Anyone who knows how a string quartet tunes knows that we usually tune tight fifths from the top down, which means that the lower strings might be a little sharp — and not flat. Unless, of course, you are Ben Chen, in which case you might tune everything really high. :) In any case, it seems like he completely missed the point of the performance.

Afterwards, we (Geoff, Barry, Robin, Chris and I) went out to Gordon Biersch for a late dinner. I don’t know how Geoff can fly in, perform, go out to eat, and still have energy for video games. It’s really quite amazing. (He’s sitting right here, tapping away).

Wendy and I went out to see Lost in Translation two nights ago, which was one of the best movies I’ve seen in a long time; it made me want to go somewhere unfamiliar and to meet someone to share the experience with (especially if that someone were as cute as Scarlett Johansson’s character was!). Even though it was sort of a serious movie, there were a few scenes that made me laugh so hard I thought I was going to throw up. Also amusing was that the Indie crowd in attendance was forced to watch a movie at the Metreon. They hissed at all of the ads and finally quieted down when Indie previews started to hit the screen. :)