Rarely and unpredictably, a performance will transcend music and become a living thing, a forceful creature that grabs the audience and won't let go until the piece ends; it then lingers for hours in the mind. These experiences transport me beyond what Gustav Mahler called "the sounds of a garrulous world" and overshadow the conductor and musicians - not because they're unimportant, but because the life-giving in their performance is so profound. On Saturday at the Adler Theatre, the beast arrived after intermission when the Quad City Symphony Orchestra and Music Director and Conductor Mark Russell Smith breathed life into Johannes Brahms' Symphony No. 1.
During a recent post-show conversation, an actor friend and I agreed that perhaps the most exciting moments at any theatrical production are those few seconds before the production even starts, when the lights dim, cell phones (please God) are turned to silent or vibrate, and the venue becomes alive with possibility - with the awareness that, in this live art form, absolutely anything can happen.
On August 17, the 
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