The Betamax cassette was invented in Japan in 1975 and released in the U.S. a year later, followed by the launch of the competitive and ultimately triumphant VHS cassette almost two years later. A card-carrying nerd, even in those early days of TV technology, I remember my excitement when my family purchased a Betamax machine around 1980. This allowed us to decouple our television from free-to-air-add-filled programming to watch movies rented from the so-called Videotheque, a hall filled with taped movies, labelled Green for G-Rated, Blue for PG-rated and Red for R-rated entertainment.
As a self-respecting preteen, I was, of course most interested in finding the red-labelled tapes wherever my parents had hidden them, but oddly enough, the tape that I played more than any other didn’t even originate on the shelves of the Videotheque. It was a self-made recording of a concert that aired on Trinidad and Tobago Television (TTT) in January of 1980 as per its title: Live from Studio 8H.
Live from Studio 8H was a series of concert specials performed by the New York Philharmonic live from NBC’s Studio 8H in Manhattan, and the edition I taped (and subsequently watched on a loop until the tape broke) was conducted by Zubin Mehta with soloists Itzak Perlman and Leontyne Price. I had decided not quite three years earlier that I wanted to become a conductor and seeing the seemingly magical NY Phil conducted by an Indian, accompanying an African American woman and a virtuoso violinist in a wheelchair, was for the 10-year old, island-educated and ambitious Kwame, the personification of the tired and misleading trope “You can do anything you set your mind to!” – and thankfully, I swallowed it, hook line and sinker.
Itzhak had played the last movement of the Beethoven Violin Concerto while Leontyne sang arias from Verdi’s Aida with Zubin wrapping up the special with the second suite from Ravel’s Daphnis and Chloe. In the decades that followed, as I fulfilled my dream to follow in Zubin’s footsteps, every time I conducted one of the works on that programme, I would experience the intense satisfaction of the 10-year old me getting what he had so wished for: A sense of “Levelling-Up” in the video game of life, because of course, yes, a year after our Betamax player arrived, I begged for and was gifted an Atari console.
Having ticked the Beethoven and the Ravel boxes many years ago, I was theoretically overdue for a level completion, and last week it happened: I skipped the Aida cut scene and jumped straight to the final Boss Battle – conducting the NY Philharmonic, with which I made my debut during a recent double week with the orchestra. And it was fantastic, a joy from beginning to end, but ironically, what struck me most powerfully, even as it was happening, was how biographically overwhelming the experience…wasn’t. It felt special, but more importantly, it felt comfortable, relaxed, right.
I was still happy for my 10-year old, but it seemed that he’d already understood that his dream had long since been fulfilled, even without a tick in every Studio 8H box. Nonetheless, what a privilege to live any dream, far less one held almost one’s entire life! I have nothing in my heart but gratitude and while, at this point, I wouldn’t have minded if I didn’t get to put a tick in the Aida checkbox, watch this space…
June 28, 2024
May 28, 2024
May 15, 2024
