Last night we saw a fantastic concert at Le Halle Aux Grains. Le Halle aux Grains is an old Halle, indoor market, that was converted to a concert hall. It is a beautiful building and about a 5 minute walk from our house. We pass it almost every day and have often talked about going to a concert there. They have a wide variety of concerts there so we knew we’d go once. Here is the Orchestra’s schedule at Le Halle Aux Grains, it’s even in English, of course it is in French too if you would rather see it untranslated. http://www.onct.mairie-toulouse.fr/en/halle-aux-grains.php
Here is a link to the exact concert I am writing about.
It is a funny story about how we got to go though. I am taking French classes at the Alliance Française and they often have special deals for cultural events around Toulouse. They received a few free tickets for this event. By the time I reached the front of the line the tickets were gone. It was not a big deal and I didn’t really know anything about the concert. I just wanted to see the inside and liked that it was free.
I got home later that day and checked our mailbox. There was a handwritten envelope but with no return address. I opened the letter and it was 2 tickets to the exact concert that evening from our new friends Alain and Maurice. We met them in the Lot and they live in Toulouse. Alain is the director of Espace Croix Baragnon, see their site here, to see the events you must click a little further, and I’m sure he gets tickets like this all the time. We had them over for dinner last week and as a thank you gesture he sent us those tickets. We got to go after all. Thanks Alain.
The story does not end. I had heard that it was general seating so if you wanted to get a decent seat you should show up at 8PM, the concert started at 8:30. We showed up and there were a lot of people. We started following the movement of people. Apparently the free tickets were given away to local schools to get people interested in the music and going to events like this. The catch was that you could only sit in a few sections, not terrible seats but not great either. We didn’t really care since it was free, but then Jean-Jacques noticed something.
Our tickets had green dots on them and you know what green dots mean . . . me neither. Well he asked an usher about the green dots and the usher said those tickets entitled us to sit in this section, and he pointed. We were able to sit in the center section of the orchestra. We had excellent seats, in the center, about 20 feet from the stage. Of course it makes sense that the director of one of the city’s best cultural centers would get better seats than students at the Alliance Française but we didn’t think of it earlier.
The music was excellent as well. It was 4 pieces. Before each piece the conductor, Ludovic Morlot, explained the techniques used on the piece, what was happening in the world when it was written, what was considered avant garde about the piece at the time, basic background and context info. It was very informal and non-stuffy, I loved it. It was also in French of course and I was able to understand every word and even think about it in French, that’s a first. It lasted about and hour and a half, perfect length for me.I will post some photos later, I actually took some. We loved the last piece, it was very dissonant and avant garde but beautiful at the same time. I’m not the biggest classical music fan but this was extremely entertaining.
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Nice! Everyone should have friends like that. We were hoping to go to a couple of the piano concerts during le Printemps de Septembre á Toulouse, but we waited too long. Isn’t procrastination fun?
Well from what I understand tickets to that series are hard to come by so you really can’t wait, if you think about it, buy them. As I get older I get better at procrastinating, I don’t procrastinate for the important things and I can seemingly endlessly put off the little things. Je suis trés efficace.
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