A couple weeks ago, Cherise and I hit the waters of Newport Harbour. The vessel was Destiny, and the occasion was Albert and Junko’s wedding.

I’ve known Albert since 2001 or so, and he and Junko had been together long before that. I started playing violin that year, and enquired with the music department at UCI as to where I could find a teacher. They gave me Albert’s phone number, and it quickly became apparent that he was a bit of a screwball. Naturally, we hit it off pretty well.

I was always pretty flexible with lessons in those days, so I usually had wildly different times from week to week. This let him accommodate his young students better, but I guess it made tracking my lessons a bit more difficult. At some point, he stopped billing me, and whenever I asked, he told me he’d get back to me.

After years of this, we settled on an agreement. We’d call it even if I took some photos at his wedding. Looking back, this may have been a clever trick on his part. It wasn’t high pressure by any means though- he had an official photographer, so I was basically free to shoot what I wanted.

A quartet of Albert’s students greet guests.

It’s actually thanks to Albert that I played at Carnegie Hall. That’s right readers, a mere two or three years after learning violin, I was heading to the same stage the likes of which Tchaikovsky played on.

I know what you must be thinking. That I must be brilliant. And I am. But not in that sense, unfortunately. It seems Carnegie Hall invites youth orchestras around the country to play their stage every so often as sort of a publicity stunt. The audience is mostly comprised of the students’ beaming parents, all armed with video cameras. Peppered throughout our mostly young Asian student orchestra, there were the occasional older guys like me, however.

Basically, months earlier, the conversation went like this:
Albert: ‘How would you like to play at Carnegie Hall?’
Alex: ‘OK.’

Albert, being the consummate networker that he is, managed to get his youth orchestra into this arrangement, and invited several of his older friends to tag along in the orchestra just to be able to say they’ve played the Carnegie Hall stage. (If you haven’t played it, you haven’t made it!)

The great Mr. Wu and co.

Playing on the stage was quite an experience, to say the least. Just for fun when we rehearsed, I gave one string on my fiddle a slight pluck. The reverberated throughout the entire room… you could have probably heard a pin drop on the stage.

Instead, during the softest, most beautiful part of the adagietto of Mahler’s 5th Symphony, we heard a loud BANG as one of the kids behind us dropped his shoulder pad. As luck would have it, we had an official videographer centered right on him when it happened. This event has been captured for generations to come, for this child’s children and grandchildren to witness.

Mischa, a groomsman, fiddling around.

The younger me probably would have never gone on that trip. I would have thought too much about it, decided I wasn’t worthy, couldn’t ready myself, and come up with a million reasons not to do it. I would have heard his proposition, probably told him I’d think about it, and then decide I couldn’t do it rather than simply agreeing to it and worrying about practising later. I think partly thanks to Albert, I gained a little bit (ok, a lot) of impetuousness, and a willingness to put myself in these kind of challenges. Sometimes it’s ok to act then think.

Anyway, I’d wish these two all the best if I felt there wasn’t any need. They’ve been together so long that I have no doubt they’ll be a happy couple for years to come.

Enough talk, more pictures.

Out in Newport Harbour.

Cherise and I. Even wearing a vest instead of a jacket, it was monstrously hot.