Last night, I went to a Christmas concert, the one I mentioned in my last post. It was in downtown San Jose, at Trinity Cathedral near St. James park, for those familiar with the area. The concert featured the Winchester orchestra, a local volunteer orchestra, and the West Valley Masterworks Chorale, the choir of West Valley Community College. They played Beethoven’s Mass in C, and selections from Handel’s Messiah.
Though by no means a professional orchestra, the musicians played very well, and the singers of the Choir were excellent, in addition to the vocal soloists. The building itself, according to a sign outside, has been around in some form since the late 1800s, and from the look of it, still features a fair portion of original parts. The only real complaint that I have about the concert experience was of no fault of the musicians’. This church, and really all of downtown San Jose, is very close to a pretty busy international airport, Mineta San Jose International. Thus, about every five minutes, there was the lovely noise of a plane flying low over the church, which definitely starts to wear after a while.
I don’t have any photos of the church or the event, sadly. It was raining when I got down there, for one, and also I didn’t want to have to stand up and walk around during the concert to get good photos, because I was with people.
A heads-up, on Thursday, I will be heading down to Salinas, CA on the Coast Starlight train. Definitely going to take photos of that experience.
–K.A.
kosokuadam 