Maestro

   The two country mice left their home on a cool sunny Sunday and drove north to the border. Teresa told the border guard we were going to Winnipeg for a Mozart concert and the guard said, "Why didn't I know about this?" He was a Mozart fan and had just been in Austria. We chatted a few minutes until a car pulled up behind us. We promised to tell him about the concert the next time we saw him.

   We drove northwest through the aspen woodlands and by the dull brown fields, past the onion domed Orthodox churches and the churches of the Mennonites, cousins of the Amish without the buggies. Through Grunthal and Sainte Agathe, over the Red River where water from the Roseau River flows too. And finally past the Daliesque football stadium and onto the campus of the University of Manitoba.

   Parking was free on weekends and we walked to the concert hall along streets still gritty from a long winter on the edge of the prairie. The river is only a couple of hundred yards away and geese honked loudly from the lawns. We saw one mother goose on a nest on a ground level window sill. 

   A stream of music lovers were headed into the new Desautels Concert Hall. We're not big concert goers but this one sounded interesting. A woman dressed as Mozart's sister Maria would read from his letters written to her to outline his biography while his music from the time of each letter was played. The Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra provided the music and the Winnipeg Philharmonic Choir, the voices. Teresa didn't remember where she had heard about the concert till she spotted a woman she had bumped into several weeks earlier at the Bead Gypsy in Roseau. The Bead Gypsy is the crossroads of culture in Roseau.

   It was a long hike to the Desautels restrooms. I saw something there I hadn't seen before - a sign that said, "This is an accepting place. Everyone is expected to know which room is appropriate for them." Why not take down the Men-Women designations and put a up a sign saying - Urinals this way.

   We took our seats and watched the crowd fill the hall. Most of the audience members were in the 60+ age group. They had probably grown up on the Beatles or Prince and now their tastes had matured. There was a cacophony of sound as the players tuned their instruments. How could they hear their own instrument in the racket? The chorus filed onto the risers behind the orchestra. Teresa counted 79 members. If two or three friends of the chorus and orchestra members attended the concert, they could fill the 407 seat hall.

   The first piece of music was written by the five year old Mozart for the piano. It was a relatively simple piece and the rest of the orchestra rested patiently for the fireworks to follow. Mozart's father was an excellent teacher and jealously managed his son's career. Maria was five years older than Wolfgang and at first played with her brother, but was eventually left at home with her mother as father and son toured Europe, which accounts for the trove of letters we now have.

   Mozart eventually broke with his father and moved to Vienna. He married and had some financial success but he also spent lavishly. He was commissioned by the Archbishop of Salzburg, Mozart's home town, to write music for a mass. The archbishop hated what Mozart wrote but all the musicians in Salzburg were agog and the performance went ahead. The archbishop stayed home  in his palace.

   One piece we heard was from an opera, but most of the music that day was sacred music for masses. No wonder the archbishop was intimidated. A mighty storm of music and voices washed over us in waves, Lord Lord Lord have mercy sang the choir. Mozart loved to have a solo voice emerge from the chorus and from time to time a tall thin soloist shimmered onto the stage. The chorus was quiet then and the soloist's voice rode the music like a sea bird over crashing waves. My focus softened and went to wide angle. I traveled to concerts hall past wherever this music was played. My pleasure perhaps was similar to Mozart's in composing the music.

   It was all over in less than 90 minutes. That was about right for us infrequent concert goers. We now had time to study the bicycle sculpture out in front of the hall which had been constructed by the dissident Chinese artist Ai Weiwei. The bicycle was a symbol of freedom for the young Weiwei when he and his family were exiled to a remote corner of China during the Cultural Revolution. As soon as he could, Weiwei moved to the U.S. where he hung around with the poet Alan Ginzeberg and also became a world class blackjack player in Atlantic City. He also started making art. When he returned to China, he was arrested for tax evasion. It took him four years to get his passport back and he immediately took off for Europe where he now lives.

   Across the street from the bicycle sculpture was a long steel fence lying flat on the ground. I viewed the fence as a piece of performance art, and in honor of Ai Weiwei, I titled it Tear Down That Fence Chairman Xi and Get Down with Mozart!

Bicycles, by Ai Weiwei