As follow-up to a Saturday Special from a couple of weeks ago, here's a Benjamin Zander video from last year's TED Conference (thanks VJ for the suggestion). In it, he shares a Chopin prelude (Op. 28: Prelude No. 4 in E Minor) as a way to open ourselves to an appreciation of classical music and its emotional possibilities.
A quick personal note about this portion of his presentation: at the 2001 Transformation Conference I produced, my wife was sitting in the front row for Zander's performance since she'd heard me talk so much about him. As he came down off stage at the prelude's conclusion, he went right toward Cyndi and kissed her on the head. With the emotion of the moment and the conference near its completion, I started crying, figuring Cyndi must have been doing the same to prompt Zander to approach her.
Asking her about it later, she told me, "No, I wasn't crying. I shouted, 'Bravo!'" Zander IS, after all, a showman. I just teared up thinking back on the story, so here's an important safety tip: have a Kleenex handy before you start watching!
Saturday, February 14, 2009
Saturday Special - More Benjamin Zander from TED
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So here's how God steers you without you even knowing what's going on:
I found this video and wrote the brief post around 1 a.m. this morning, Valentine's Day.
When seeing Zander perform the piece at Transformation (as mentioned in the post), the person gone from my life I thought about was my Aunt Rosie, who had died in the mid 1990's.
It didn't strike me until later this morning that Rosie's birthday was February 14, Valentine's Day.
There was no particular reason for me to find and post this video today. But it makes all the sense in the world that it happened. That's an invisible spirit at work!
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