Legendary concerts

There's a couple concerts I've been to that stand out in my memory, decades afterwards.

Isaac Stern at the Roy Thomson Hall in Toronto, Ontario - it was the 1983-84 concert season, and I was broke so I got half-price seats, which in that venue were at the back of the hall behind the stage. At the end of the concert, Mr. Stern took his bows, and then announced that since he had been playing all evening with his back to the people seated behind the stage, he thought it was only fair to perform his encores to us, with his back to the main audience. So for the encore, it was like having front-row seats to see one of the world's greatest violinists perform. That was actually a great year for violin concerts in Toronto: Yehudi Menuhin and Itzhak Perlman also performed at Roy Thomson, and so I saw all three of them in the same year.

And going back almost two more decades, to my very first live concert - Simon and Garfunkel around 1966, in Winnipeg - in a school gymnasium. They had three albums out by then - Wednesday Morning 3 A.M., Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme, and Sounds of Silence - and I knew every word to every song. Not a bad concert experience to begin with. ;-)