A Night At Carnegie Hall With Trey, The Vermont Youth Orchestra, And Tons of Adolescents - 9/15/04

(This post is a transplant from a defunct blog, and was written on Wednesday, September 15th, 2004)

A NIGHT AT CARNEGIE HALL WITH TREY, THE VYO, AND TONS OF ADOLESCENTS
My friend calls me up this morning to see if I wanted to see Trey Anastasio (Phish) play with the Vermont Youth Orchestra (VYO) at Carnegie Hall.

I'm like, what? Having dreams of Run Like An Antelope being played by flutes and trombones, I agreed, and only later did I realize that Trey would be playing a very short amount of the time, and most of it would be classical.

It was worth it, though it did start off slow. While the first act was not bad to slightly boring, the 2nd more than made up for it. Two very nice and nicely played pieces, more pop in them than the first act, led into Trey Anastasio taking the stage to tumultuous applause, much shouting, and several "I Love you Trey"'s, of course to be expected. (What wasn't necessary was the lout whooping right after the first piece. Time and place buddie, time and place.)

Trey only ducked his head in for his first piece, done soley by the VYO, "Guyutie." This is a piece that you will hear on the weather channel, during local on the 8's. I'm not kidding.

It was, in a word, awesome. The first part was an intro that he originally wrote to be in the song, but eventually became "My Friend, My Friend." Guyute was explosive, done very well, and put the weather channels ez listening version to shame.

The 2nd piece was The Inlaw Josie Wales, with Trey on Guitar, the Conductor on violin, and several other Alumni of the VYO on other string instruments. It was so good, you just forgot that it was 7 people playing, and it became a part of you, just flowing along. Very nice.

He did an encore with some other female alumni,and it was absolutely beautiful. They sang a simple song on the guitar, him using the mic during his lines, them shouting them out together for the chorus. One of the more touching pieces of music I've heard in a long time.

The scene was absolutely ridiculous. I'm 26, and I was among the oldest there. The majority of people were kids below the age of 18. Thats fine, but geez, they acted like it was recess right after nap time, and they made a fool of themselves. (Yes, I was probably like that too once, not too long ago, but I couldn't have been that annoying...could I?)

Overall, I'd give it an 8.8.