A Happy Extended Birthday Celebration

This past Sunday was Matthew's birthday, but he was working.  If you have to be working on your birthday, at least it got to be somewhere cool like Tel Aviv, right?

He got home late Monday night, so we celebrated on Tuesday with a few gifts and a homemade gluten free apple pie. 

The gift I was most excited to give included tickets to a studio concert of Bach's Goldberg Variations performed on a handmade, double manual harpsichord, dinner reservations at a tiny cafe a few blocks from our house, and a babysitter for the kids.  There was nothing to "give" since the tickets were just by reservation and not printed, so Jackson helped me out by making a ticket for "Goldberg + Dinner". 

We clearly need to give him more exposure to piano keyboards

The performance was in a private studio, so it was a very intimate setting with maybe 20 audience members.  We love the Goldberg, but had only ever heard it performed on piano, so this was a real treat. We both marveled at how hearing the piece performed on the instrument it was originally written for allowed it to shine in a way not possible on the piano and brought out an entirely different experience.   Sadly, the majority of us today have never heard Bach's keyboard works as they were intended.

The best part is that all of this was within walking distance of our house.  The experience (sans babysitter) reminded me of the opportunities we had in college as music students to hear amazing music performed live just steps from where we live. We both left with a desire to attend events like this more frequently. Hopefully here we will have that opportunity!