Last night was the finale of the 2009 “Hot Summer Nights” Music Festival which is held every year at the Missouri Theatre in Columbia. Second half of the program was Tchaikovshy’s Fourth Symphony in F Minor. So far, so mainstream. But the first half of the evening was given over to a world premier, no less, by the harpist Deborah Henson-Conant, a Spanish-tinged concerto of sorts called Sonando en Espanol. It was actually a very enjoyable piece, especially the extended solo interludes where the percussive nature of the harp got very close to some of the drama and passion of flamenco. I liked it.

It was only afterwards, though, as I was flicking through the series program, that I discovered that I had just been listening to, and I quote, “the world’s greatest Blues-Flamenco-Celtic-Funk-Folk-Jazz Dynamo”. Or, possibly, the world’s only Blues-Flamenco-Celtic-Funk-Folk-Jazz Dynamo.