I donated my father's violin to VAM (Vancouver Academy of Music) last year and they offer me free tickets to all their events. Today we took advantage of it and went to their symphony orchestra's performance of The Emperor which was preceded by a performance of Beethoven's 7th symphony. Wow, we were so impressed by this orchestra and also by Ian Parker who conducted and also was the pianist for The Emperor. It's a very large orchestra, around 60 pieces, and as good as anything we've heard.
Parking turned out to be pretty easy...$10 flat rate on Sunday for a lot on Smithe just a block from The Orpheum. We got down early so went exploring in the Commodore Bowling and Billiards. Jim played pool there as a teenager. The bowling looked like fun (5 pin) so we went and had a game after we had a late lunch/early dinner at a Japanese restaurant in the area called ShuRaku. It was excellent and great to have a raku grill.
We hadn't really been to this area since we moved back to Vancouver. We were at The Orpheum about 20 years ago seeing a concert of Charles Aznavour. As kids we used to go to movies at The Orpheum. They have done an amazing restoration...what a treasure!
Good thing the scoring for the bowling is automatic as we really didn't remember how.
Lots of weird sort of stuff.
To listen to music in such a venue...wow!
Our old university friend, Doug McCallum, was the author of this book on the Orpheum...quite a prominent display.
Jim won and I took a photo of the final scores but quite a few photos failed for some reason.
