As I am not musically literate, I find that it is hard to articulate what I enjoyed about Monday’s concert. My father is a great fan of classical music. I grew up listening to it and attending concerts. I have also worked with Orchestras in various performances I was featured in. To preface this, I used to take singing very seriously. I trained with professional vocal coaches and enjoyed practicing. Yet, I never took the time to seriously learn to read music. Little things still resonate as familiar, such as common time or every-good-boat-does-float. Most of this training, however, escapes me. When I entered high school, I took up acting and the division of my time between singing and acting killed my musical determination. On Monday night I really tried to tune my ear to the performances. In Instants D’un Opera de Pekin, there was a repetition of a light and lyrical melody. The piece also had sharp contrasts between crescendos and decrescendos. The pianist started off playing softly and then progressively built. In addition, the softness was accompanied by a series of trills (I believe?) giving the piece a fantastical feeling. The contrasting of crescendos and decrescendos, however, provided a more ominous feeling. Yet because the pianist kept on coming back to the lyrical melody, the dark characteristic of the piece was overshadowed. The last piece by Zhou Long was by far my favorite. The clarinet in juxtaposition to the violins produced a vibrant and almost jazz infused sound. In addition to the percussion, the combination of the instruments gave the piece a fast rhythm that made it more exciting and captivating. The interesting thing about the class of 78’, which I had read, but only discovered on Monday, was that most of the work had no distinct point of origin. Some of the music was inspired by Hungarian folk and other by Taiwanese drumming. I mostly loved the professional conduct of the musicians. From the way they bowed to the movements of their hands, their professionalism was quite inspiring.