As I am not musically literate, I find that it is hard to articulate what I enjoyed about Monday’s concert. My father is a great fan of classical music. I grew up listening to it and attending concerts. I have also worked with Orchestras in various performances I was featured in. To preface this, I used to take singing very seriously. I trained with professional vocal coaches and enjoyed practicing. Yet, I never took the time to seriously learn to read music.

  Taking Devorah’s advice and spare ticket, I decided to attend a comedy show at the Upright Citizen’s Brigade on the west side. My sister has been going to the UCB for years, but never successfully convinced me to attend. In part, I decided to attend because I needed to rack up some independent cultural events and because the show was specifically geared towards college humor. During high school I studied improvisation, which has certainly come in handy these last years.

 Questions for our trip to Carnegie Hall: 

1. What was Chinese classical music like prior to the cultural revolution and how did it change thereafter? 

2. In rejecting the, "international style," how is there no distinct point of origin in the class of 78's music? 

3. Is Chinese composition determined by education, personal experiences or both? 

4. In seeking to bring music back to China, is this a collective or more individual effort? 

     Joan Acocella states in an essay about music and its importance to Mark Morris, “Structure gives us freedom,” (166). Structure and freedom, however, appear to be in opposition of one another. Acocella contents that it is with knowing and understanding structure that we can learn to break it. In Mark Morris’ choreography, he loves the clarity of structure that is afforded by working with a composition of music. Moreover, his work is a, “physical act of musical understanding,” (162).