Sting, Sir Paul, Me and a Few Friends

Nothing to do on a Thursday night in London. Why not dull the boredom pains by donning the black tie and heading off the (Classical) Brit Music Awards. That's exactly what I did last week along with Huy, Jenny and Joyce (friends of mine from Melbourne). At this stage, I need to give a shout out to Huy for scavenging the tickets from his work. Nice work, Huy. And what tickets they were. We had a three-course meal and box seats located within spitting distance of royalty (Camilla Parker-Bowles aka the Duchess of Cornwall was in attendance). From our vantage point, we had a magnificent overview of proceedings, while the likes of Sting and Paul McCartney had to strain their necks and contend with the unwashed masses as they attempted to follow proceedings from ground level.

The Awards part of the evening, while obviously important, took up little time and served as a minimal distraction from the real highlight - the musical performances. Now, I'm no classical music aficianado, but I've got to say the performances were all stunning. There was real quality in the line up, from the Fron Choir giving a truly moving rendition of Land of My Fathers to the prodigy Lang Lang blowing the audience away with his mastery of the piano during a performance of Franz Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody No 2. While I restricted myself to restrained applause at the end of each round of amazing musical feats, I really wanted to jump up and cheer wildly. It was really that good. Do yourself a favour, if Lang Lang drops into your end of town, do anything you can to get tickets. It's worth it. Here are a couple of photos of the night, courtesy of Joyce.