When I decided to join some work colleagues in Charleston for a performance of the Trans-Siberian Orchestra, I thought I was going to hear a philharmonic from Russia. I dressed up nice and prepared for an evening of classical music.
I couldn't have been further off the mark! My first clue was that the audience walking in was in shorts and blue jeans, and tubs of popcorn were being sold in the lobby. The show was a crazy mixture of rock band, heavy metal, laser lights, pyrotechnics, opera, and storytelling.
The highlight of the evening for me? A bad-ass violinist named Roddy Chong. Yeah I know, you don't usually hear bad-ass and violin in the same sentence (except, perhaps, for Nadja Salerno Sonnenberg, whom I also adore). But the guy was insanely cool: playing his violin over his head, running across the stage, doing splits, dueling with the guitarists, hoppin' and stompin'. I am officially a Roddy Chong groupie; I want to follow him around from gig to gig and swim in his brand of crazy.
I wasn't close enough to get a good shot of him (a few of my photos below), but you can check him out on this video someone posted on YouTube:























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