Your John Hancock, Dmitri

For those of you who were living in caves last week, on Sunday Houston played host to the 2006 NBA All Star Game. It was another opportunity to showcase our great city and more aptly to this blog, the Houston Symphony. A small percentage of the orchestra was lucky enough to be there to represent (along with another famous local group by the name of “Destiny’s Child” ) the myriad of talent this city has to offer.

I could go on and talk about the production, the music, the special effects, even- gasp—the GAME--- but let’s face it, that’s all secondary to the REAL show- the celebs. There they were in all their bling-bling, bodyguarded glory…the Hollywood types, the tall athletic types, the Presidential types.

I’m not the kind of gal that feels comfortable asking for autographs. But when a colleague managed to get Shaq’s signature, I admit to feeling a pang. I mean, the guy is a huge presence, a huge sports hero, just plain HUGE. She showed off her trophy at the crew dinner before the game. “Look, he signed it right over the part (of our artist access pass) that says ‘NO AUTOGRAPHS ALLOWED DURING MEDIA ACCESS PERIODS.’” “When did you get it?” I asked. She shrugged. “During the media access period.”

She confessed to have an autograph collection. Remember those autograph books? In the dark days before the internet, children, people used to have things like photo albums and autograph books. Never heard of them? Oh, just go Google it. Anyway, my colleague had grown up in Louisville near a concert venue that hosted some of the greatest musicians of the last century. She told me about meeting Dmitri Shostakovich.

Shostakovich (1906-1975) was a Russian composer of the Soviet period. We played his Symphony No. 10 in Carnegie Hall last month. He had a troubled relationship with the government, which included two official denunciations of his music; in public he remained loyal, joining the party in 1960. The biting irony and dark moods of his works are said to harbor the seeds of his unspoken rebellion and dissent. One can be both deeply moved and horribly depressed after hearing a work by Shostakovich; you may feel like you need a dose of flowers, bunnies, and puppies afterwards, to snap out of it. Or just hit the Prozac.

“They kept telling me not to speak to him, that he didn’t understand English, but I could tell he understood everything perfectly. He was just so quiet, so oppressed, so beaten down. He kept his head down and didn’t say a word.” She described her meeting with one of the most tragic figures of the 20^th century.

Now the world has moved on, the Soviet bloc has been shattered, and it’s fairly easy to get into the McDonald’s in Moscow. What would it be like to meet Shostakovich now? Instead of KGB, it would simply be bodyguards and possibly his agent that surrounded him. “Keep the line moving folks…pay your $75 right here…no, Mr. Shostakovich does NOT personalize..no, we do NOT provide EBay authentication……”

Anyone have a Sharpie?