Classical Mystery Tour!

Saturday night, E and I went to see the Austin Symphony's tribute to the Beatles. The website said the layout was picnic tables - I was sure we were going to be sitting outside, like Wolf Trap. But I was wrong! It was inside the Palmer Center's cavernous music hall. We picked up dinner at Central Market beforehand. A lot of the other patrons had box dinners from Jason's, or amazingly elaborate dinners and setups including little shelves to put stuff on!



The orchestra came out right on time, and played a lovely medley of Beatles hits: Hard Day's Night, She Loves Me, Michelle, Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds, Hey Jude, and others. At this point I thought, "Ok, now what?"




Wouldn't you know it, The Beatles came on stage! It was excellent. Apparently the "Classical Mystery Tour" is the combination of a Beatles tribute band and a great orchestra playing backup. The Fab Four are from the Broadway show "Beatlemania," so the singing voices are spot on. They did typical 60's costumes for the start, and then changed into the Sergeant Pepper costumes in the middle, and into the 70's stuff later.

We were the youngest people in our section by at least 20 years, and this was clearly an "event" for the older Austin social set. We must have been sitting in front of the most popular table in the place - everybody had to come say hi at intermission. It was a blast! We sang along to almost everything.


Song list:
  • Every Single Day
  • Hard Day's Night
  • When I Saw Her Standing There
  • Eleanor Rigby
  • Yesterday
  • (costume change!)
  • All You Need is Love
  • Penny Lane
  • Here Comes the Sun
  • Sergeant Pepper
  • I Get By With a Little Help From My Friends
  • She's Leaving Home
  • A Day in the Life
  • **intermission**
  • Magical Mystery Tour
  • I am the Walrus
  • Obladi - Oblada
  • Yellow Submarine
  • Come Together
  • My Guitar Gently Weeps
  • Baby I'm Amazed
  • ("McCartney Montage")
  • Long & Winding Road
  • Live & Let Die
  • Imagine
  • Golden Slumbers
  • **encores**
  • Hey Jude
  • Twist & Shout
It was tons of fun! They were selling t-shirts and CDs after the show, but we didn't hang around. (I thought, mistakenly, that I'd be able to get the CD from their website. Oops.) Next time, I think a) I'll get a whole group together, b) we'll get a closer table and c) we'll bring a better picnic. :)

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Ciao, Italia!

Image
Eating our homemade pasta at the Villa Third time's the charm, right? After two failed attempts to get to Italy (IXPUG Meeting in 2018, foiled by a Nor'easter, and May 2020 foiled by COVID) , we finally made it!  Friday, May 20: We were not the only ones in the airport with masks, but definitely in the minority. The flight to Dulles was uneventful, but the C and D gates at IAD were *packed*. Lots of school kids going to Europe.  We had the middle and window seats in the middle of the plane, but not in Premium Economy (which apparently didn't hold over from our tickets purchased 2 years ago). Ugh. The guy on the aisle was a fidgeter. And there were so many little kids on the plane! I felt bad - one of them cried for his mommy for about three straight hours. But I was also super grateful for my earplugs and eyeshades. The gluten-free food on the plane was HORRIBLE, btw. Do not recommend.  Saturday, May 21 I will say, when we arrived, it was the fastest passport check ever - E
Read more

I see London, I see France...

Image
Saturday, June 3: Landed in London on Saturday with only 2 hrs of sleep on the plane... which is what happens when you're seated right next to the restroom. Sigh. We dropped our stuff in the apartment and went to lunch with the parents, and then we went off to find the Polish museum - only open the first Saturday of the month. Of course, we went to the wrong tube stop and had to hike a million miles... The Polish gentleman who was the tour guide was a survivor of WWII, I think. He knew everything - and assumed that we knew nothing, especially about WWII, which is not a good assumption to make with our family. Anyway, John and I were totally exhausted after the museum, so we went back to the flat for a while. The 'rents had theater tickets, so John and I stumbled out to find dinner in the rain and ended up having burgers at GBK  in Earl's Court. I think the maitre'd was American. This was the start of my string of bunless burgers (gluten-free was hard to find) on this
Read more

Sixteen Days in the UK - Part 4

Image
Part 4: A little hiccup in our plans  On Wednesday , we slept late. We were exhausted from all of the travel and moving around and driving, so we took a lazy day. After breakfast, we did a little bit of shopping (Boots, Oxfam, and even a yarn shop) and took more photos. In retrospect, we probably shouldn't have started talking about how we couldn't wait to go home.  We had one thing on our calendar that had been scheduled since April - a tour of Castle Stalker , which was the castle out in the lake at the very end of " Monty Python and the Holy Grail ." The castle is a private residence, so they only do one tour a day, for 12 people. We had reservations for Wednesday afternoon. We decided to go see Dunstaffnage Castle on the way to Stalker, since both are near Oban.  Remember when we pissed off the faeries? Well, they were still mad.  We were finally motivated enough to leave at 2:30pm, at which point we discovered a flat tire - the front driver's
Read more