While thinking of and listening to Yundi Li who happens to be in Tokyo tonight...

Yundi Li is in Tokyo. He had a concert at Tokyo Metropolitan Theatre (東京芸術劇場) tonight and will have another concert at Tokyo Opera City tomorrow night. Though I'm a huge fan and Opera City is less than 10 minutes walk from my apartment, I didn't know about his concert until a week before or so...I might as well be disqualified from being his fan and calling Shinjuku "my hood" altogether! Of course all the tickets were sold out when I checked. What a shame! Well, in order to quit feeling disappointed, I looked for this video clip and started listening to it:




I first heard this marvelous Yundi Li when I lived in Kentucky, USA. I was working at a car factory and was on my lunch break. For that one-hour lunch break, I would usually drive to a park nearby, park my car on the hilltop, and eat a sandwich in my car alone, with my favorite radio program called "Performance Today" on NPR, turned up at full blast. It was a perfect way to forget about work in the middle of the day and to escape from reality; that incomparably miserable reality I somehow managed to put myself into and miraculously ignored who I really was and what I really wanted for as long as I did. Anyway, "Performance Today" featured live classical music concerts and was hosted by a guy called Fred Child. I remember I liked his soft voice and the way he spoke. He would usually introduce new and unknown artists recently performed in music festivals throughout the world. Yundi Li was one of the numerous newly discovered artists on that show that day, and his performance took my breath away. I never forgot his name to this day, and he's one of the pianists I'd love to hear in person some day.

When I lived in Kentucky, I had two serious (&long-term) boyfriends, and one of them was called Erik. He was a piano major student at Berea College and was the teaching assistant of the piano professor that I was taking private piano lessons from. Despite our age difference (6 years?), Erik and I naturally shared passion for music (piano in particular), and we went to many concerts together. Especially after he moved to Boston to become a piano technician, I had a privilege to hear many performances by Boston Symphony, and when he was working for the famous Aspen Music Festival, I heard sounds of all the big names firsthand and almost drown myself. Two of my favorite pianists I've heard live were Jon Nakamatsu (gold medalist of 1997 Van Cliburn International Piano Competition) and Evgeny Kissin (who needs no introduction). I wanted to share a funny photo of Kissin and I taken circa...2008? Look at Kissin's face! How excited he was to be in my photo! :)

Anyway...I got sidetracked (a lot!) but does anyone have extra tickets for Yundi Li's concert for tomorrow night??? Yeah, obviously, I haven't given up just yet!!