This past Saturday, award-winning violinist Bin Huang performed Beethoven’s Violin Concerto in D major, Op. 61 with the Palo Alto Philharmonic. Yesterday, she accompanied Eric to Stanford University to make photographs for her upcoming CD. I went along for the ride, documenting the portrait session on a very chilly Monday afternoon and evening.
Other people assisting Eric included Ben, Lynn, and Rae (Kendrick and a friend of Bin’s were also there at times). We began at the courtyard in the back of the Cantor Art Museum and ended up in the (warm) confines of the History Corner basement. There are some lovely staircases and sculptures at Cantor. I’m going to have to go back there to take some nighttime shots.
At Cantor, no one was around to watch us, but at History Corner, students were pouring in and out of classes throughout the night. Though we all looked young enough to be students, we knew better. It was funny watching these Stanford people look at us like, “What the hell is going on here?!?”
Eric had things well in-hand, so I took the opportunity to document the event and have fun with the camera. The History Corner has very colorful carpets and rooms. They used to keep the building open all night, which made it a good place to study and work during all-nighters. One of the rooms has a projector in it; if you had access to it, you could watch impromptu movies in the evenings! With the ease at which DVD-enabled laptops hook up to A/V equipment, who needs to go to the cinema anymore?
Afterwards, we all drove to Il Fornaio in Palo Alto for some much-needed food and drink. We were so hungry that we gorged ourselves on two baskets of bread before the entrées arrived! I ordered the seafood linguine, and it had a very strong, almost overpowering, seafood taste to it. Figures, eh?
There’s a whole vocabulary and grammar to talking about music that’s as developed as any foreign language. I don’t have much of a background in music, so I just kept nodding my head while trying to follow Bin, Eric, Lynn, and Ben’s various discourses on musicians, pieces, and schools. I once played piano as a child, and I did try violin, but I just couldn’t develop the coordination necessary to be any good.
One of the workers at the restaurant took our picture at the end of the evening, Though he didn’t cut our heads off, he framed the image pretty poorly. But hey, something is better than nothing, right? Here are the rest of the photos from the afternoon and evening.
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