The full review:
Wednesday evening I attended a performance of the Meadows Percussion Ensemble on the SMU campus. It was excellent. The students in the ensemble are extremely talented. Unfortunately, I left my program at the concert hall, so I don't remember the names of anything in the first half (and I won’t be able to scan it for Dietmar, sorry!). The last piece before intermission featured Jamal Mohamed from D'Drum. The second half was all Stewart's music: selections from Mikrokosmos, performed by the ensemble, and then The Gene Pool where they were joined by John Bryant from D'Drum. I now know that the piece I love from Mikrokosmos, that I got a 2nd hand copy of (cough) that wasn't labeled, is called Bears. They played it a little more sedately than the copy I have, but it was still great. It all got an excellent reception from the audience, and Stewart was called onstage afterward to cheers and great praise.
I spoke to Stewart briefly during intermission. I probably should have waited until after the show, but I wasn’t sure I’d get a chance then with everyone else wanting to talk to him. I introduced myself as luna_virgo from sc.net and he said "Well, what do you know, I know your handle". I said, in full fan-geek mode, "I'm from Birmingham", and he said "So's my family". I didn‘t want to take up too much of his time, so I wrapped it up with "I'll be at the lecture Friday" and he said "Ok, cool". (Sorry if I was an intrusive dork, Stewart. I just had to let you know there was a Nutter there to represent.)
At his speaking engagement on Friday, it was pretty clear where the Nutter section was. Spec A, Rhonda (sockii‘s friend), Rhonda’s friend Amy, and I were front row center, wearing an unmistakable display of Krypton green. John Bryant from D'Drum introduced Stewart and then sat onstage with him and a couple of students who took turns asking him questions. Seeing Stewart speak in person is an experience. He's very animated and uncensored. Many of the student and audience questions were about The Police, of course, and his time in Dallas working on the Gamelan D'Drum piece (he talked about the crazy weather the week of the premiere). He told some of the stories that are in his book, but there were a lot of surprises too, like the anecdote about Andy's endowment ("Andy's a big guy - horizontally!"). And when someone asked him about Klark Kent, he said "I guess I can admit it now, I am Klark Kent!"
Afterward, he came over to us and signed our stuff, and we got group photos with him on everybody's cameras. He is so cool to take time to talk to fans. And it was clear, both times I saw him, that he enjoyed being there with the students at SMU.
Photos of my entire trip are here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/luna_virgo ... 464183942/Feel free to skip straight to the Stewart pics if you don’t want to see my whole travel diary. I had a great time all week in Texas. The only thing that would have made it better is having more of you there with me!