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Probably the oddest event in my rather limited career of observing fiddlers occurred in the Red Lion Inn in Stockbridge, Massachussets. The Red Lion is near Tanglewood, the summer home of the Boston Symphony, but has little to do with classical music; it is more noted as a home for an eclectic variety of performers of blues, bluegrass, jazz, rock, or whatever else works. I was there on a summer weekend many years ago; the band was somewhere between jazz and bluegrass, and rather good. In one of the intermissions two middle aged men, visibly drunk, got up on the stage and, despite some level of objection from band and management, insisted on taking over the piano and the fiddle. What followed was one of the more striking single hours of music I have heard, though I wouldn't want to try to classify it. The two were later identified as Andre Previn and Itzhak Perlman. |
