The China Festival at Carnegie Hall was an enjoyable experience. Although I don't play any instruments and the music at the concert wasn't anything that I put on my mp3 player, I was paying close attention to the performers and the way they were playing. The first pianist was boring me a bit in the beginning because he started off slow and somber. Then, suddenly, he hit a very fast "Tom and Jerry" pace. I noticed that he had a look of intense concentration throughout.

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I have to admit that our meeting with the artistic director of Carnegie Hall was not quite what I had hoped it would be. He didn't really give much insight as to what his role is at Carnegie Hall, and I felt like he spent more time promoting the venue than he did expressing his love for his job or his appreciation for the arts. It was interesting to hear about the amount of planning that goes into creating events like the Chinese Festival, but I think I would've liked a more personal perspective on what it is like to have a career in the art world.

I remember last summer, I was in Paris, and I went to the Pompidou Center, a very odd building with infrastructure on the outside, painted in bright colors. There, I saw an exhibit on Kandinsky, which I liked a lot (and mentioned in my photography paper for this class). A couple of months later, back in New York City, I started to see advertisements for the same exhibit at the Guggenheim museum. I have been debating with myself on whether I should see the same exhibit again.

  So today was yet another first as I made my way to Carnegie Hall. It was quite obvious I had never been there as I tried every entrance but the correct one. For class we went to meet Jeremy Geffen, who organizes and selects the performances to be shown at Carnegie Hall. He mentioned to us that he sees hundreds of performances to select from and it takes him a couple of years to completely plan one event.