My autograph from violinist Joshua Bell arrived in this week! As I posted previously,  my dear friend Heather Pace was able to get it for me when he was in my hometown performing with the Mobile Symphony!

I love my autograph dearly, especially the exclamation point behind my name! I can’t wait to hang it next to the others in the living room (ABT dancer David Hallberg, choroeographer Frederick Ashton, and cellist Yo-Yo Ma).

Ben Harper e-mailed me this week to let me know that he posted pictures from Joshua Bell’s rehearsal and performance with the MSO on the web!

The coolest set of photos are on their Myspace Page  of Joshua’s rehearsal with the MSO before the concert. The first picture in the album is the best–Bell exiting a car on Dauphin Street outside of Larkins Center. It’s so surreal seeing him somewhere I know so well, on a street I’ve driven down millions of times–and very paparazzi-esque!

To pass time waiting on my building shuttle to ride me home, I phoned my parents back home in Mobile, Alabama.

They were both in the front yard, swatting away mosquito’s and journeying to get the mail (we have a long driveway).

“Oh, you have something from Heather Pace Arnott,” dad said. Heather is the very lovely marketing manager at the Mobile Symphony Orchestra. My most favorite violinist, Joshua Bell, recently performed with the MSO, and she e-mailed me the night of the concert, “We will miss you.”

I could hear my mothers voice in the background.

“Do you want us to open it?” dad asked.

“No–wait. What kind of envelope? Is it addressed to me?” I asked.

“A big envelope,” my dad said. I suddenly knew what it was. Heather had sent me an autograph from Joshua Bell.

I directed my parents to open it, but not to touch it. I held my breath. I could hear mom ripping open the flap.

“Well what is it?” I asked a million times.

“An autograph!” Mom and dad said at the same time. They read the signature. “To Ariel–Joshua Bell.”

I nearly fainted on 86th Street.

“Oh my gosh! I can’t believe she did that for me! Oh my gosh!” I had to explain to my parents who Heather was, and that Joshua Bell was my favorite violinist of all time. They laughed at my excitement, and promised to send me it shortly. I’m going to hang it on the wall somewhere near my other autographs (I have choreographer Frederick Ashton, Yo-Yo Ma, and David Hallberg already on my walls).

I called Heather’s office and tried not to sound too excited, but thanked her profusely on her answering machine. I owe her!

Something I’ve always wanted to happen will happen on today: Joshua Bell is performing in my hometown. Ironically, I won’t be there to hear what I consider the most wonderful interpretation of the Tchaikovsky violin concerto, but I’m so excited for Mobile and for the Mobile Symphony Orchestra!

I was scheduled to interview Joshua for the Mobile Press-Register, but it kept getting postponed. However, I was thrilled to see that Kris Pierceat WHIL did, and you can listen to the whole interview via there website podcast page by clicking here.

Just in case you missed it, opera vocalist Arnold Rawls commented on my post about Hal France.

For the Mobilians: Rawls sung “Calaf” in a stellar 2003 production of Puccini’s “Turandot” with the Mobile Opera. It’s such an honor to have him reading this blog!

Mobile Ballet’s production of “Coppelia” is this weekend, and I’m returning to Mobile briefly to see my sister dance in the “Work pas de deux.” It will be strange to go back, especially since I hear the weather is quite pleasant.

I miss Mobile terribly tonight. I haven’t spoken to anyone in person since Saturday, so I feel quite solitary. My family is out taking in a show, my sister is presenting flowers to the Hermitage Ballet during the curtain calls. Mother said it was 60 degrees there. Downtown Mobile is awfully beautiful after it rains.

I miss all of those Mobile Arts things: like having my ticket torn by my usual usher at the symphony, the long walk through the parking lot to the front doors of the Civic Center in the dark, spending lazy Sunday afternoons at Space 301, chatting up Charlie Smoke at the LoDa artwalks, waving at all those MSO people like Sarah Wright and Heather Pace, hearing Scott Speck’s voice at the beginning of a concert “Good evening…” or “We just heard the overture to…” and Thomas Harrison’s Sunday morning column.

Mobilians: You have a good opportunity to see your major guest artist of next year, and my personal favorite violinist, Joshua Bell on PBS New Years Eve.

Yours truly is in the city, but unfortunately I think the show is sold out! Don’t forget, Bell is performing with the Mobile Symphony Orchestra in Spring!

So I really got acquainted with my Olympus DSLR tonight. I took over 400 photos at Mobile Ballet’s dress rehearsal for “The Nutcracker” and after my sister was finished with her roles, we had late night sushi in Midtown.

I’m really quite pleased with the batch of photos I took. I few are still blurry (I’m having shutter speed issues) but the rest I love.

Here are a few…more coming definitely….

This first one is of Caroline Frey, a young dancer with Mobile Ballet and ABT’s Blaine Hoven (who also used to dance with Mobile Ballet).

Shannon Kendall and Bobby are pictured here in the first act, as the “Toy Dolls.”

Guests at the party in the first act pause as the clock strikes eight and the Drosselmeyer appears!

Kristins Winger post of a snow-covered NY street and Matt’s photo of white railings remind me of what’s to come when I move to New York next week: cold weather. I’ve lived in the South my entire life, only seeing snow twice. Mobile snow shuts down the city for a day. No school, businesses close, churches cancel services. The TV news devotes a day to live coverage of up-to-date news on the “extreme” weather. When I lived a few hours from Orlando, Florida, we used to go out in tank tops on Christmas day. It would be 72 degrees or hotter.

Snow is a luxury for me. Last year when I was in New York for Christmas, a woman on an elevator told me she heard a rumor that it was going to snow.

“Snow!?” Dione and I said simultaneously. We began to jump up and down and hoped that any drizzle we saw was a snowflake. (We’re so Southern we had to be taught what snowflakes were. As little children, we thought those big shapes we cut out of white paper for school actually fell down that size).

We never got snow, but the other Christmas-card like NY scenes were enough: the tree at Bryant Park, seeing NYCB’s “The Nutcracker,” and the synchronized display at Saks. I have to remind myself every day that I’ll be experiencing cold, snow and blizzards for the rest of my life.