Classic

Backtracking: GO!

About three weeks ago, Amy, a fellow primary school English assistant, had a great idea. We went to Nice for "C'est pas Classique," a classical music festival taking place all over the city. Free concerts all over the city, from squares to churches to the big events inside the 'Acropolis' (DC folks: pretend the Kennedy Center was built in Nice in 1970s concrete). We saw all sorts of groups: little string quartets, choirs who were rehearsing, a 20+piece band, the Nice Philharmonic Orchestra accompanied by soprano Barbara Hendricks, a French gospel choir...

Yeah. American gospel music sung by French people. Complete with clapping. And robes. And thrown in pump-up ad-libs (in French), with "hallelujahs" (in... whatever the language is). Yeah. Actually, I was pleasantly surprised-- the festival had not advertised a comedy hour, and yet here we were.

I don't know much about classical music, but I liked what I heard. Seeing the Nice Philharmonic (and for free!) was a real treat. Amy and I had a great time touring around Nice stumbling onto the various bands. I should also note that that included a band on wheels (which included a piano on wheels) in Place Masséna and a chamber orchestra performance of Vivaldi's 'The Four Seasons' back at the Acropolis on the Sunday.

That's really about it. I only have two other details to add:

1.) Double-click on this sentence to see my photos from the weekend.

2.) The event name "C'est pas Classique" is, technically speaking, grammatically incorrect. To negate a verb in French, you put "ne" before (or "n'" in the event of a vowel) and "pas" after. The correct version would have been "Ce n'est pas Classique," but casual spoken French tends to do away with the "ne." I'm still not sure why they called the weekend that, since almost all the music we heard was classical, and I typically think of France as being very proud of its language, rules and all.