I still remember my first trip to see the LA Phil. It was with Marv McKissick. We went down and caught the pre-show lecture (of course) and parked on the street like those crazy native Los Angeles-ites do. I was a tiny little freshman at APU so I had no idea how all of this worked, so I just followed along and soaked it all in. Quite the experience, it was…
I distinctly remember them performing a piece by Ligeti where there were two pianos on stage…the pedals were depressed the entire time and the lids were off of the pianos. A dude stood behind each piano and for a good 10 minutes during this piece they were constantly rotating their hands in circles with brushes of varying thickness on the strings of the piano–creating this constant hum throughout the “song”. Quite artsy and weird if you ask me…but that was the first time I knew you could do something with a piano besides bang on the keys to make music.

Awesomeness.