On Saturday, Susan and I attended Greg and Agi’s wedding up in Vancouver. While we’re a little tired of weddings (this is our third, and hopefully last this summer), this one was special because I was part of the wedding party in a way: I played cello while the groom’s party and groom walked down the aisle. The music was my adaptation of Metallica’s Nothing Else Matters for two cellos, as alluded to before. It went very well. Yousuf (my cello partner, a coworker of Greg’s, Thai kickboxing champion, lead animator, and otherwise all round cool guy) worked very hard on the music and it showed. Those who were familiar with Metallica – if you’re a friend of Greg, chances are you get familiar with them at some point – obviously thought it was cool. I’m not sure what others in the audience thought about the slightly strange music in minor key, nor did I ask the other musicians (a string quartet who followed up our performance with the bride’s music – that wedding stalwart, Pachelbel canon) what they thought, but I think we gave Metallica’s music the justice it deserved. The rest of the day was the usual wedding festivities, albeit with a Hungarian flavour. Finally got to see Hungarian dance troupes do their thing after years of hearing Greg talk about it. Also it was nice to catch up with Reza, my old roomate from Ottawa from exactly ten years ago. He apparently reads this blog – hi Reza!
In a rare moment of verbal wit, I mentioned to my sister that had I the opportunity to play, and the choice of music during Agi’s entrance, it might have been Iron Maiden’s “Bring your Daughter to the Slaughter”. Maybe next time. I’m not sure if anyone taped the performance, or whether Lars Ulrich and James Hetfield will have a cow if I post a recording, but I’ll see what I can do.
For our work (which included a practice in Vancouver the weekend before, the wedding rehearsal on Friday, and another practice just before the wedding itself – so I’ve been pretty busy with this gig) Greg gave me a cool toy: a replica of Darth Vader’s lightsaber from Master Replicas, complete with glow and sound effects. It now has a place of honour above my TV set, and almost immediately proved useful: it was the closest light emitting object available when a rain and windstorm knocked out power to my house late Sunday night.
