On our way back from Gainesville on Friday we stopped in West Palm Beach for Art After Dark at the Norton Museum, which included a concert of Chinese classical music played on a pipa, a zheng, and a qin. Moon cakes were served in a nearby room.
Saturday we drove to Miami for the Centennial Concert at Trinity Episcopal Cathedral. The normally half-hour journey took us 90 minutes – you’d have thought Art Basel was in town – causing us to miss much of the Mozart. But the second half was more to my taste any way: Bach, Fauré, Vaughan Williams and Handel. The concert concluded with the Hallelujah Chorus.
I returned by myself to the cathedral last evening for the choral evensong, which featured only sacred music, including Vaughan Williams’ The Old One Hundredth Psalm Tune – fittingly, as yesterday was the composer’s birthday. There were almost as many people at evensong (my favorite word in the English language) as had attended the concert, and it was heartening to see the grand 100-year-old building in the heart of Miami bursting with music and voices and life.
