Ensorcelled!

The people streaming into the Mount Baker Theatre this afternoon for the Whatcom Symphony Orchestra's second concert this season -- a sell-out crowd for the 1500-seat main stage of the historic Spanish-Moorish building -- were drawn by virtuoso violinist Gil Shaham, who performs with top-tier orchestras around the world.

Today he performed the Brahms Violin Concerto in D major, op. 77 with the Whatcom Symphony Orchestra, our amazing community orchestra, and and filled the hall with a lyrical performance rich in nuance and his affectionate regard for the orchestra. Mr. Shaham's expressive face did not get in the way of the music -- it enhanced it, and brought my own joy to the surface, and I was far from the only person in the audience smiling with pleasure, and hardly wanting to breathe or blink for fear of missing one of the notes from his flying fingers!

After several curtain calls and a brief encore, he spent the intermission cheerfully signing CDs and talking with many concert-goers, young and not so young, giving each one his full attention and wonderful smile.

I feel immensely fortunate to have heard an artist of Gil Shaham's caliber here in my own small city, in a seat nine rows from the stage, and to be reminded once again of the tremendous power of live music!

(Ensorcelled means enchanted, bewitched, fascinated, charmed. I commented to a friend sitting next to me that Gil Shaham was a wizard, enchanting us all with both his skill and his obvious enjoyment of the music, which led to my title today.)