Yesterday I attended Macy's Free 2 Days of Music that kicks off the start of Sommerfest at Orchestra Hall. It used to be 24 hrs of music, but this year the schedule stopped at 1am, and started up again at 9am. I went down there at about 3pm, listened to some music and wandered around. I spent about an hour walking around downtown and stopping in stores from a world I no longer live in, and wondered if I wanted to live there again. That would be another posted I guess.

I went back to watch the junior e-pianio competition awards. It's a very interesting competition.
"participants will have the opportunity to perform on Yamaha CFIIIS concert grand pianos. What is unique about these instruments is that they are equipped with state-of-the-art Disklavier Pro recording technology. This system, which was pioneered by Yamaha, is the fusion of the acoustic piano and computer electronics and allows all solo rounds of the competition to be downloaded via MIDI to be enjoyed anywhere in the world. "

The above is true but really doesn't explain it that well. The piano's are kind of like recording player pianos, that record key and peddle pressure, what ever the player does to the paino. Then the judges can play it back on a piano where they are. This explains it better.

During the awards ceremony the contestants sat on the stage and watched as a visual showed them playing a piece in the competition and a piano on stage played it out! These kids were amazingly good players, perhaps better than some of the adult ones I have heard in the past.

The judging was a bit strange, there was 1 fifth place winner, 2 third place ones and 2 first place ones. The first place ones then played a concerto each with the Minnesota Orchestra.

We were planning to listen to some more bands after the Orchestra performance but when we got outside again we found that a storm had come through, knocked down a bunch of tents, damaged the 3 outdoor stages, and it was very wet. They were supposed to be back up for this morning but everything outside last night got cancelled after the storm.

This is a picture by TOMruen on weather underground:

Caption:

View from third Ave bridge in Minneapolis just before the storm front hit. A pretty sky - darkest straight above, and rain in the west was a soft glow with the promise of the returning sun when it passed. (And the end of our 73F dewpoint I hope!)