Jim Panttaja

We are in Jackson Hole, Wyoming for a long weekend for a management retreat for Rebelvox. A year ago we met here for a week to kick off our company, and have returned to spend some time on strategy and planning, and to have some fun.\r\n\r\nThe fun has included floats down Flat Creek, walks, good food, and a bar-b-que. But one evening we went to the Grand Teton Music Festival as guests of Tom\’s friend (and now our friend) Pete Selkowitz.\r\n\r\nLast year we had been here during the festival - but hadn\’t managed to schedule a concert. This year when Pete learned we were going to be in town, he made the arrangements.\r\n\r\nThe Festival\’s music director is Donald Runnicles, the current music director and principal conductor of the San Francisco Opera.\r\n\r\nThe program included a piece by Oliver Messiaen, and Gustav Holst\’s most well known piece, The Planets.\r\n\r\nThe Messiaen featured the women of the San Francisco Festival Chorale, and a variety of keyboard instruments, including a Celeste, and an Ondes Martenot. The Ondes Martenot is an early electronic instrument which sounds a lot like a Theremin.\r\n\r\nThe Messiaen was more texture than melody. The various keyboard instruments, and the choir, adding to that texture. It was beautiful\r\n\r\nWe were talking with a couple of the musicians before the concert - one of the violist was saying how interesting it is that their don\’t seem to be that many pieces by Holst - pretty much limited to The Planets, and Saint Paul Suite. I mentioned a couple of band pieces (he wrote  two suites for band). The violist laughed - because of course band pieces wouldn\’t be on the top of his mind. There are other pieces - but these four pieces are by far the best known.\r\n\r\nA special treat with this performance was a video show that was displayed as the orchestra performed - produced by Jet Propulsion Lab, with images from various space missions. I loved the performance of the orchestra. I was giddy during the better known movements (Jupiter and Mars), but enjoyed it all. The orchestra is made of wonderful musicians from around the US. They come in for one to six weeks of the festial. They feel like an orchestra that has played together for a long time - and many of these musicians come back year after year - so there is some truth to that.\r\n\r\nThe rest of my party particularly enjoyed the images. They are incredible - and the very fact that we could send probes in to space to get the picture of a volcano eruption on the moon of one of the planets (among other images) is phenomenal.  But for me - it was about the music.\r\n\r\nI want to come back next year - and attend more concerts.

Mary has commented on our trip to Madison (Mary Panttaja). Madison is a great University town. We had ice cream one evening near the Memorial Union, looking out over the lake. Lot’s of people eating hot dogs, drink beer. Lot’s of great bike trails - we rode one to two hours every night.

And one night we saw fireflys as we walked back to our bikes. Hadn’t seen them in years.