Cracking Bamboo

Thursday evening, Steven and I had plans to attend a free concert in the Conservatory. We had learned of the event and received our free tickets through staff at Steven's school. The performance was called Cracking Bamboo and was billed as an East meets West combination of traditional European percussion instruments with traditional Asian instruments. Both of us thought it sounded like it would be a good show and we headed out with high hopes for an enjoyable evening.

After talking up the convenience and reliability of the buses to Steven, I found myself standing with him at the bus stop for the 54 to Ben Thanh for 15 minutes. Not wanting to risk getting into a shady taxi (we think some of the drivers can manually control their meters, having ridden in one where the meter jumped 2,000 every few seconds, compared to a 2,000 jump every few miles or so in most cabs), but also not wanting to wait to long since we hadn't eaten and planned to eat at Pho 2000 before the show, we peered expectantly into the road as each set of bus lights appeared and, more often than not, turned the corner before reaching our stop.

Finally, our bus arrived and we hopped on for the ride to the Ben Thanh bus station. Having decided on the way to risk being late to the show, to avoid our enjoyment of the show being tempered by our hunger, we headed straight for Pho 2000, where Steven ordered his Vegetarian Pho and I, my Seafood Pho.

After dinner, we made our way over to the Conservatory of Music which we had passed on numerous occasions during our stay at the Lan Lan 2, and were pleased to find that the show had not yet started and that there were seats available in the balconies surrounding the concert hall on the second level.

To begin the show, a woman from the German Institute hosting the show came out and gave an introduction, followed by a translation of the introduction in Vietnamese for the majority Vietnamese audience. After the introduction, the performance began, not with percussion, as we'd anticipated, but with a European soloist singing opera-style from the balcony across the room from where we were sitting. Steven and I exchanged confused glances which progressed to more pained than confused as she belted out a staccato aria in a language we could not decipher.

This first piece went on much longer than we imagined was necessary for a concert billed as a percussion concert; the only percussion present, the dinging of a single bell in between verses. Steven and I passed the time whispering mystery-science-theater-esque commentary on the performance. When the first piece was over, the "Asian" part of the show came on and although they lacked the distinguishing soloist, they also unfortunately, lack pizazz and we spent the second performance guessing the identities of the few western members of the audience who favored people knew, careful not to talk so loud as to disturb our neighbors. The other couple from AIS made it half way through the third performance, which involved the opera singer dancing around somewhat ridiculously on the stage and hitting a drum back and forth with one of the drummers in what appeared more flirty banter between children than a professional performance. Steven and I persevered through a few more performances and agreed later that we enjoyed about 10 percent of the show, but were glad to have gotten out and done something different.