Dr. Robert Froehner performs live in St. Louis
2006-07-31 by David V
Hello all, I had a wonderful treat tonight. Dr. Robert Froehner came to St. Louis this weekend to play with the Compton Street Concert Band, a semi-professional winds ensemble that plays classical, pops, and marches and has concerts every weekend throughout the summer at two city parks in St. Louis. I caught him at the first concert (the second one is Monday night) at Francis Park in south St. Louis. He performed on both the theremin and saw. On theremin he performed "Love Sends a Little Gift of Roses" by Openshaw, "Serenade" from "The Student Prince" by Romberg, "Ave Maria" by van der Beek, "Good Vibrations" by the Beach Boys, "O Mio Babbino Caro" by Puccini, "Summertime" from "Porgy and Bess" by Gershwin, "Amadeus" Lacrimosa from "Requiem" by Mozart, and the theme from "Star Trek" by Courage. On the saw he played "Over the Rainbow", "Sweet Georgia Brown", and "Danny Boy". Oddly enough, I had never seen a theremin performed live before tonight, so that made it that much better. Dr. Froehner performed reasonably well in the heat (97 degrees at the concert starting time of 7:30) on his Moog Ethervox. I had never seen a saw played either, and was surprised to see that he played it off the left side of his lap entirely, bending it almost parallel to the stage, and using the bow vertically to play it. I must admit, it was very impressive to see him rip through the jumpy melody of "Sweet Georgia Brown". It was probably the high point of the evening! I had to leave at intermission in order to get home to do the Spellbound radio program tonight, but I was able to catch the first half of the concert and it was certainly time well spent. -- ----- DAVID VESEL -- synthetic music for humans http://davidv.purplenote.com porphyrous@... ----- The Purple Note Radio Network: Escape From Noise, vocal electronica, 10PM Sats http://efn.purplenote.com Spellbound, music for theremin, 11PM Suns http://spellbound.purplenote.com -----