Shaherizad

I was thirteen years old when I first saw the Philadelphia Orchestra play. I was learning violin at Little Flower High School the summer before eighth grade, and I had never played any instrument before so I was excited. The camp director, who was also the high school’s orchestra director, was this short, chubby balding Italian man name Mr. Panchelli, and Mr. Panchelli was a freak for classical music. He decided we camp kids should learn how the functions of a professional orchestra should look on stage, so Mr. Panchelli arranged a field trip to the man theater to see the Philadelphia Orchestra play a rehearsal. We arrived at the theater and all piled into our seats to watch the performance. Around us where many benefactors of the orchestra who, upon donation, received free tickets to all of the rehearsals. The conductor walked out on stage to settle the audience and welcome everyone. Before each piece that was played he explained the origin and nature of the piece. About two ballads into the performance the conductor announced Joshua Bell as a guest violinist. He walked out on stage and waved and bowed and began to play with the orchestra sitting behind him. Now, just before we had arrived our teacher had announced to us that Joshua would be playing as well. He then continued to give us a brief play-by-play of Joshua Bell’s life. Joshua Bell: · Started playing violin at the tender age of four. · Began playing with the Philadelphia Orchestra at the age of 14 · Yade yade yada, I stopped listening after awhile and started talking to my friend about if he would be cut. Now, let me just tell you, he is! And he is also a genius. Watching him play was the most amazing thing I had ever seen! He played so freely! So wildly! His body was like jazz music the way it moved about, which I had never seen before because so many violinists can be ridged when they play. So there I was watching the Joshua Bell, the Yoyo Ma, of the violin playing his heart out. The rest of the orchestra seemed like nothing compared to him. We girls, sat in the back of the theater watching, through our binoculars, and lusting after this sexy, muscular, talented genius of a man. I didn’t think the show could get any better than that. I was wrong. At the end of the 4th song the conductor turned to the audience to introduce the next piece. The next piece was a section from the song Shaherizahd. Before I explain to you my opinion of this piece, let me explain to you the story behind the music. Shaherizad is an old Indian folk tale about a sultan who had trouble getting to sleep at night. Every night the sultan would order his guards to bring him a woman. He would demand that each woman tell him a story that entertain him and put him to sleep, and if their stories failed they would be put to death. Well every night the guards would bring him a woman and every night the woman failed and was killed. Until, one night the guards collected a young girl named Shaherizahd to bring to the sultan. Shaherizahd knew that if she did not entertain the sultan he would have here killed. So she told the sultan the best story she knew. The sultan was entertained and wanted more of the young girls’ stories, so for almost 3 years Shaherizahd lived with the sultan and told him stories and over those three years the sultan fell in love with Shaherizahd and made her his wife. The song Shaherizahd was inspired by the story and each section of the song is meant to portray each story that Shaherizahd told to the sultan. So as we all sat there and listened to this song we began to feel drowsy. The song was so beautiful and each story that it told was so vivid, and, yet, we could not hold our heads up. We were wide awake only moments before the song, and when the song ended we seemed to snap back out of our dream states. Shaherizahd was like a lullaby, doing to us what each story was meant to do to the king. I kept trying to stay awake. The song was so beautiful and enticing that I did not want to miss a beat. I felt like a child trying to stay up to hear the end of a bedtime story, so interested with lids so heavy. It was as if the music notes floating above my head where sprinkling sleeping sand over my head. I had never been so moved by music before. To be so physically effected by a song was so strange to me. I could not control my body; it was as if the music had seized me. I fell in love then. No song has ever again infected my body in such an intense way. For a composer to create something so power continues to perplex me to this day. The show ended. We went on our merry ways back home. We chitter chattered about the gorgeous Joshua bell and which one of us would marry him, and this and that, but all the way I sat perplexed by the melodious song that had seized me. The day…that moment, will forever stick out in my mind. That is what inspired me to be an artist. To have such skill with my art and take people the way that song had taken me is my dream as an artist. I will forever be working to over shadow Shaherizahd.