So, if you're in Oklahoma City and can pronounce "Stravinsky," you're missing out if you don't catch the new Red Rock Chamber Orchestra in one of the other two performances of L'Histoire du Soldat, either Friday night at Cherokee Hills Christian Church, or Sunday night in Norman at the Reynolds "Yes, It's Still Holmberg Hall" Performing Arts Center.

I normally would have been at the OU Wind Symphony concert on Thursday night, but The Niece (a double-bass player) was in town, and the director of RRCO is Justin Seal, whom I last discussed conducting here. Debby liked the RRCO option better since she's met Justin before, and since (unlike the Wind Symphony) it involved actual strings, and was in a smaller venue. Plus, this was RRCO's first concert ever, and that's hard to pass up. (And I'm confident the OU Wind Symphony will do great at CBDNA.)

The mutant flu bug that's been hitting everyone around here hit RRCO's rehearsal schedule as well, forcing postponement of the Tchaikovsky Serenade for Strings until a future date. They needed to concentrate on L'Histoire du Soldat because they weren't alone in it: Oklahoma Festival Ballet dances with the piece, using new choreography by Holly Tall Chief, as mentioned in The Oklahoman here.

Normally, either I don't understand music by Stravinsky on the first (or second, or third) listening, and if I do, the mental question "WTF?" is usually replaced by "Why??" (See, for example, this.) But with the program notes, visual open captioning of the French narration, and very accessible choreography, I actually understood this the first time.

Not only did I enjoy the dance, which surprised the heck out of me (it's normally not my cup of tea), I need to say that the Red Rock Chamber Orchestra sounded fantastic. I go round and round with Justin because I'm congenitally incapable of telling him what he wants to hear even when he needs to hear it, and when he's directed student ensembles that were out of tune or not that accomplished, I've told him that. It's par for the course with student ensembles. But RRCO sounded great in their debut Thursday night. The intonation and tone was spot on; they were precise and cohesive. If you didn't know it ahead of time, there's no way you would peg this as their first-ever performance.

If I didn't like this, I'd just let it slide without comment, but this was simply a first-rate performance of difficult material that was accessible to anyone who cares to see it. You can understand what's going on. There were some sync problems with the on-screen visuals (containing the translation and related images) because it runs at a pre-set pace, and the performance isn't timed to a click track or anything, so occasionally the translation is ahead or behind. But read the program notes first and you'll have no trouble understanding what's going on. The four dancers from Oklahoma Festival Ballet were excellent as well.

So go see it tonight or Sunday night, if you would like a real live chance to see something like The Soldier's Tale instead of just listening to it on CD or reading about it. (I know OU did it a year or so ago, too, but I still say it's worth seeing now even if you saw that performance.) And it's free. They put a lot of work into it, and it paid off. Go see it.