You should have been there

First off, thank you to Pamela for taking care of the blog during my vacation-related absence. Let's hope she keeps posting regularly, as I really enjoy what she has to say!

I came across or was sent a few different things to post about in the last little while. This one is going back a couple of weeks, but the Globe and Mail published an article about the live music experience.

Everyone has a story about a great concert. It's impossible to say how much burnishing is done in memory, and it doesn't matter anyway. But I tend to distrust any recollection of a famous or momentous event – Woodstock, say, or Vladimir Horowitz's last recital. History's finger seems to press a little too heavily on the scale. My own favourite concert experiences are mainly fragments, this song or that opera scene. But for many people, it's most satisfying to point to a whole event, to have that feeling of remembered fullness from one magic night, and to say, “You should have been there.”

We asked musicians, artists, music mavens and committed fans to recall their favourite show and to say what rang the cosmic bell for them.

Then follows a list of fascinating stories from the likes of Anton Kuerti to Ron MacLean. Orchestras tend to put on so many shows each year, it's easy to forget that any one of them could be that magical memory for someone...

You should have been there