Guitar concert - the Assad Brothers

Sunday, October 10, 2010 Day 102


It rained intermittently much of today, so we spent most of the morning indoors. At 2:30 we packed a bottle of white wine in an ice bag, put that inside another bag, and left to walk over to the Corum, a concert and meeting venue. We had tickets to see the Assad Brothers who are classical guitarists from Brazil. They have won numerous awards, including a Latin Grammy for best contemporary composition in 2008. We arrived early because there was no reserved seating and because we wanted to see if we could meet up with Patricia. She was having an Apero after the concert and invited us to come. We arrived around 3:00 for a 4:00 concert, but the doors did not open until 30 minutes before the concert, so we sat around and people-watched for a while. When the doors opened, we went in and sat down, bringing along our cooling bottle of wine in its bag.

The concert was great. The guitarists did not play anything that was familiar to us, but we enjoyed it tremendously nevertheless. They played two encores. Afterward we connected with Patricia and walked to her apartment where we had wine and interesting food and lots of French conversation. I found that I could follow about half the conversation, but if there was ever a joke, I never caught it. There were two other couples there besides ourselves, and a single guy (a special friend of Patricia’s, I think) and a single woman. One of the women is Moroccan but she speaks very good English and is married to a Frenchman, so I assume she speaks very good French as well. She often translated for us, as did Patricia at times. It made for a delightful evening. I believe that if I could sit and listen to them every day for an hour or so, I could learn a lot more French. Perhaps I should start watching more French television.