Symphony Part I - In the style of that Raymond Carver guy.

I'd never been to the symphony before last night.  I listen to classical music and I know a little bit about classical music, but I never really even considered going to the symphony.  It helped that I was invited.

A friend of mine that I recently met in Atlanta invited me to the symphony two weeks ago. I don't remember how the conversation went when I was invited but it may as well have gone like this:
"Hey, I have season tickets to the symphony," she said.
"That's wild," I said, "the symphony. I like Mozart."  And then she invited me.

So the last two weeks I've been wondering what to expect.  You know, thinking about the space - will it be in a stage like a theater or a stage like at a concert?  Will there be stadium seating?  What am I going to wear? I asked myself a bunch of other questions too.

I got to the place a little earlier than she did and helped myself to a drink.  She came a little later and she showed me where the restaurant was.  We were supposed to meet in the restaurant, but I couldn't find the thing.  It ended up being hidden around  the corner.  We had another drink there.

The stage wasn't a theater space nor was it a concert space and there was not stadium seating.  I will try to describe it properly, but I will probably do a terrible job.  I would say it was like an auditorium with comfier seats and better acoustics. It was a large space, sitting at least 500 people, maybe more.  There was not a center aisle which made getting to our seats toward the middle of our row slow going.

I was told that, before the conductor came out, a man called the Concert Master would come and tune the orchestra.  Everybody started clapping when this happened.  I was confused because it didn't seem to me like he did anything at all.  But people clapped, so I clapped with them.  There's an etiquette to these thing and I tried to go with it.

Then the conductor came out and everybody clapped again.  He shook the concert master's hand, who was directly to his left, paused, raised his wand in the air, and the whole orchestra readied themselves.