This afternoon I was treated to rousing performances of music for piano trio by Brahms, Bartok, Prokofiev and Mendelssohn, as well as an arrangement for violin and piano of the violin meditation from "Thaïs." It took place in the church hall of Old First Church (First Dutch Reformed Church) in Park Slope, just five minutes across Flatbush from here, so I got to see the inside of a venerable house of worship as well as enjoy a concert. And yet the main pleasure was something else again - for this was a concert for toddlers and their parents. The Tiffany windowed sanctuary of First Church was rendered a parking lot for strollers, and the musicians, the Sweet Treat Trio, were dressed up as candy - Mandy cotton candy on violin, Julie jellybean on 'cello, and something chocolate on piano (eventually they were joined by an enemy of candyland turned temporary ally, the pleasingly tomboyish Broccoli Rob, who played the flute). The concert took forty-five minutes, during which, we were told, chocolate cookies with rainbow sprinkles were baking in the kitchen just adjacent.
The kids were remarkably sedate, possibly held in place by culture-starved parents' hunger for music that isn't explicitly edifying or about lollipops. (But the actions intended to help the medicine go down - waving your hands, making popcorn, kicking up your heels, etc. - were more enthusiastically performed by the older set, too.) Not sure what I make of the whole event - it isn't
just bougie parents reproducing class privilege through the transmission of cultural capital, is it? At least for me it was also an interesting glimpse into the liberal bougie parenting mecca of Park Slope!
This afternoon I was treated to rousing performances of music for piano trio by Brahms, Bartok, Prokofiev and Mendelssohn, as well as an arrangement for violin and piano of the violin meditation from "Thaïs." It took place in the church hall of Old First Church (First Dutch Reformed Church) in Park Slope, just five minutes across Flatbush from here, so I got to see the inside of a venerable house of worship as well as enjoy a concert. And yet the main pleasure was something else again - for this was a concert for toddlers and their parents. The Tiffany windowed sanctuary of First Church was rendered a parking lot for strollers, and the musicians, the Sweet Treat Trio, were dressed up as candy - Mandy cotton candy on violin, Julie jellybean on 'cello, and something chocolate on piano (eventually they were joined by an enemy of candyland turned temporary ally, the pleasingly tomboyish Broccoli Rob, who played the flute). The concert took forty-five minutes, during which, we were told, chocolate cookies with rainbow sprinkles were baking in the kitchen just adjacent. 