The Spoleto Finale (Sunday, June 10, Middleton Place) is a festival of two worlds. Up front near the house, everyone listens to the music (although it’s acceptable for two ladies to have a quiet heart-to-heart).
In the back, where a rubber chicken swung from a tree (replacing the piñata), the scene is more of a genteel Taste of Charleston or Oyster Festival — with background music by Mussorgsky.
There are the usual elaborate picnics with candelabras and gourmet pestos. And then there was the group next to us with a jar of Jif, a jar of jelly and some bread, leaning up against a white cooler. Big enough to hide a corpse in, the cooler was filled with Miller High Life, the cans piling up next to it as the night transgressed (to borrow from a favorite malapropist of mine).
It was a nice day, not nearly as warm as Saturday. Liz and K.C. Rennie set up at 4 p.m., out in the sun, in order to get a great spot close to the stage. The heaviest stream of picnickers was from 6 to 7, and you could still get a spot in the shade, if you wanted, at 6:30.
Mate and Kate Campbell brought the piñata and a ton of Mexican food. Margie Longshore and her cousin Katie Derrick celebrated Margie’s 30th birthday. The other Marj - Wentworth, the poet – and husband Peter, judged the picnic contest.
Dally Hubbard, Ashley Kubista and Lakeyia McKenzie, of the Spoleto Box Office, wearing clever “Fill Up Glass” tees by Soiree Warhol Impersonator David Graham, bragged that they “sold tickets to all these people.”
A bocci-playing crew from Big John’s Tavern, Chris and Pamela Condon (staff), Adam Hartman (staff), and Damian Collins (regular), offered this reporter a Jager-bomb and “about 30 more burgers.” Chris and Pamela were married a month earlier and got engaged at last year’s finale.
“He proposed right after the music ended, just before the fireworks began,” Pam said.
Another strange new world at the Finale of a festival known for its graying audience was the children.
Roaming around near the giant Live Oak were Ann and John Bourgeois of Charlotte, pushing their 16-month-old son Fleming, adopted from Russia this year. And architect Jeannette Alexander was just back from Vietnam with her newly-adopted baby girl Covey.
Olive Gardner got to play with festival friends Jasmine and Jade Kennedy one last time before they headed back to Santa Fe. Mom Rosie Kennedy flashed a new necklace from Pompeii Jewelry (her bling was left out of my Music in Time Party Fashion Spectacular).
Two of the Spoleto Festival Orchestra violinists whom dad John Kennedy auditioned, Soojin Chang and Rena Ishii, of the Cleveland Institute of Music, relaxed backstage beforehand. Have to say, the SFO spread looked a little meager: all I saw was PB&J and a jar of mustard. A loaves-and-fishes collection of leftovers on the Great Lawn would’ve garnered enough fried chicken, deviled eggs and sushi to feed two symphonies.
The music of the finale was anything but Modest, and the ending with the brassy Great Gate of Kiev and a giant roman candle spouting from the butterfly lakes was thrilling. Sitting and watching one firework after another for twenty minutes, with no music, not so much. I’ve never been to a fireworks show with that much paper shrapnel either.
Traffic on the way home was a breeze, an easy ending to a really perfect event.
Cheeses eaten: Manchego, Gouda, Stilton with apricots.
Philip Glass mentions: 1.
Final Tally
Parties at private homes: 6
Others: 4
Different kinds of cheese: 24.
Philip Glass mentions: 9, not counting the party for him and his ensemble.
“When did you cut your hair?” comments: 13.
When I cut my hair: June 4, 2004.
Times corrected for my pronunciation of the word “mahogan(n)y”: 8.
