March Sports

      It's time to get caught up with our adventures in Durham. March was a very busy time for Duke sports and I managed to take in a few contests live. The biggest on campus event involved the women's basketball team.  They hosted the first two rounds of the NCAA women's basketball championship tournament and I was lucky enough to have tickets for each game given to me by my friend Spiro.  They're great seats and over the past couple of years I've gotten to know some of the other season ticket holders.  It's a fun and chatty group.
      The opening round featured Duke v. Hampton and Oklahoma State v. DePaul.  Each team brought their pep bands, which increased the atmosphere as well as the noise level.  Hampton brought several bus loads of boisterous fans and played Duke pretty even for awhile, but Duke ultimately won.  In the second game, OK ST got off  to a big lead in the second game , but had to hang on in the second half to beat DePaul.  Duke and OK ST got the BB wins, but Hampton won the battle of the bands. They were great playing, singing, and dancing their way through the contest.
      In the second round game Oklahoma State again established a big lead - at least 14 points as I remember.  Duke's come-back was tremendous and Cameron Indoor Stadium was rockin'.  Duke won and moved on to the Sweet Sixteen.  The OK ST cheerleaders were very athletic and put on some great gymnastic displays, but if I never hear the song "Oklahoma" played again it will be too soon.

     In addition to the women's basketball I made it to a Duke baseball game.  The game played at the Durham Athletic Park was against Boston College.  It was a good game, even though it seemed to take forever.  It seems as though college games move at a snails pace.  But the day was sunny and warm and Duke won, so a good time was had by all  - well by me anyway.

     I also attended a men's tennis match.  In college tennis they play three doubles matches first vying for one match point.  The each match is played to 8 points - win two of the three matches and you get the one point.  Then 6 singles matches are played each worth a point.  Duke has one of the top players in the country, Henrique Cunha, from Brazil.  He's a very steady player.  We played Miami and won handily.
     I've played quite a few rounds of golf in March, thanks to a series of gift certificates given to me for Valentines Day by my beautiful, loving wife.  The courses are just starting to "green-up" and the trees are in flower.  My game however seems to still be in hibernation.

 

Music and March

     Although the daffodils have bloomed and the flowering trees are strutting their stuff, mornings are at still quite chilly and the temperatures are struggling to get of the 50s.  I'm not complaining, mind you, as I've heard from friends up north that snow remains on the ground, but this is the first spring in Durham that we haven't had a long series of warm days. We've been able to keep busy attending concerts and attending sporting events.  I'll deal with the concerts first.
     In early March we attended the Duke Symphony Orchestra's concert.  They were celebrating the works of Britten, Wagner, Gluck, and Sibelius.  Highlights of the program were Britten's Simple Symphony for Strings and the Violin Concerto by Sibelius.  The Britten piece took four melodies he wrote as a youth and tied them together.  It was quite moving with melodies which suited my simple tastes..  Musically the Sibelius piece was more challenging.  However, the performance by Jingwei Li as the soloist was amazing.  Ms. Li, a Duke student, was the winner of the Duke Concerto Competition and was outstanding, playing the difficult opening movement "without a lick of music", as my father used to say.  It ceases to amaze me as to the level and diversity of the talent of the students at this university.
      Each Spring the Duke University Chorale presents what is called it "Tour Concert".  Over Spring Break they head off to some exotic location to present a series of concerts and then bring it home for the university.  This year upon their return from the Bahamas their concert was held in the Duke Chapel, which always a great place to hear and see a musical event.  The director of the Chorale, Rodney Wynkoop, told his audience that of the 50 or so members of the Chorale only 8 were upper class men(or women as the case may be).  The group's a cappella numbers were very good.  The opening number "Ave maris stella"  was particularly effective in the chapel setting.  I also thought the arrangement and presentation of a Rumi poem "Where Your Bare Foot Walks" written by David N. Childs was very good.  The group must have had a problem hearing the piano accompaniment on several of the numbers in such a large space as the Chapel as pitch became a problem, not between the parts but with the piano.  Anyway, great work by a young group of students.
     One of Nan's friends, author A. J. Mayhew, sings with a group named The St. Matthew's Women's Singing Circle.  They performed at the St. Matthew's Church in Hillsborough and we attended a concert they sponsored.  The Singing Circle performed a number of songs in a folk and gospel tradition.  Several of the song were in what I would call the primitive folk.  (If you saw the film "O Brother Where Art Thou" you'll know what I mean.)  They were accompanied by percussion and guitar on most songs and did a nice job.
     They were the "warm-up" for The Gospel Jubilators,  an all-male gospel group from Durham who have sung all over the world.  They were founded in 1972 as a response to what they saw as the growing commercialization of gospel music.  One of the original members of the group is still singing with them.  Having spent over 10 years performing and sometimes conducting a gospel group, The High Spirit Singers, it was a great pleasure to see and hear the Jubilators.  Their harmonies were tight and presentation crisp and moving.  They even did a couple of songs that High Spirit used to do - Swing Down Chariot being one of them.  They had the audience join in on several of  their numbers and I had the pleasure of belting out the tenor on "Count Your Blessings".  I'd go see them again, that's how much I  enjoyed it.