This & That

La Cucarrrrrrrracha!

Starting chronologically, the first event we encounter is SD Boy's concert. We drove down to Utah for it a week ago Friday.

 

There was lots of beautiful music, I mean really awesome stuff. The thing about this particular choir, though, is that they can have lots of fun. They ended the concert with a rendition of "La Cucaracha" and had us all laughing when they very seriously and ceremoniously put on these:

Is there anything more interesting than a redhead with a black fake mustache? 

But then he lost his because after being under stage lights for over and hour, they're a little sweaty by now.

The Trouble With Saying Yes

You might remember, back in the day when I had multiple boys at home, who warbled their way around the house and in various other places, I did a lot of accompanying for them and for others. However, the warblers have all left the nest and their voice teacher changed jobs and is now teaching choir at the local middle school.

So, I haven't played much in the past couple of years except for Sundays in Primary (the children's section of church). Now, I love being in Primary. The kids are great and the music is fun, but not very challenging. So the voice teacher called me a couple of weeks ago and said they were having an Honor Clinic at the middle school where she teaches and wouldn't I just like to get a workout for my hands in? An Honor Clinic is when all the middle schools and jr. highs in the area send a few select students to one location for a day, to work with an out-of-the-area clinician and then they present a concert that night. The clinician picks 4 songs for them to sing and we spend the entire school day practicing them and preparing for this concert. Enter me, who will sit at the piano all day pounding out parts and then perform with them at the concert. 

Now to the point of today's post. The trouble with saying yes to this project is that I am rusty, and a couple of the pieces really move along....and did I mention that I'm rusty and haven't played challenging music for a couple of years? And now I'm sweating it and wondering why the heck I said yes. This is such a double-edged sword for me. I want to keep my skills at a decent level, but not doing this type of work for a while makes it a really scary proposition, and the question is....Do I really need to spend my time being scared? Do I just let the skill go to waste? You see my problem here?

So by the time most of you read this, I'll be sitting at one piano bench or another, struggling through a Haydn that is written in 2 and a couple of technically challenging spirituals and one nice legato feel-good piece. Wish me luck....and don't tell me what my mother did yesterday when I was whining to her about it. "You know, you could sit down a practice for an hour every day and then you wouldn't be in such a panic when you do stuff like this." Yes, I COULD, but I probably WON'T.

We Were Sleigh Riding

Our ward put on a little Christmas concert for a care center here in town last Sunday evening. The choir went over and sang its Christmas numbers and a few of us did other little ditties. We had one member who played "O Holy Night" on his accordian and that was a lot of fun. There was one little lady on the front row that sang along to everything. I had asked The Girl if she'd be interested in doing a duet with me. At first, she gave me an immediate "no" because she thought I meant singing, but when I asked about a piano duet, she was much more interested.

So for the past couple of weeks, she's been practicing really hard  on this arrangement of "Sleigh Ride". It's one I played with my sister when we were both teenagers as well as with another lady in the ward. The Girl has never played a duet before, and until last night, we'd never made it all the way through without stopping to fix something. But we managed to get through it for this little program, and I was really proud of her stepping up to get it learned in time. Now, this isn't us playing....and we didn't do it this fast, but here's how it sounded...if you slow it down just a bit.

 

The Singing

We headed down to Utah last Saturday for SD Boy's  BYU Men's Chorus concert.

Men's Chorus concerts are always wonderful, not only because they sing beautifully, but because they just have fun doing it. This is during what their director (in the pink dress there...so funny, she is Welsh, very proper and just a bitty thing directing all these crazy boys) calls "The Hoopla". It's a medley of songs from "Paint Your Wagon" and involved members of the choir playing fiddles, spoons, a harmonica, Jew's harps, a banjo, and those clippity-cloppity things that sound like the horse hooves.  SD Boy is in the photo. Let's play "Where's Waldo". Can you find him? And if you need a reference, here's his face. I do have to say, though, that it's pretty easy to pick out the redheads in the choir.

The Singer.

The Singer and his wife. They are still newlyweds, after all.

His brother.

All of them together, and the hilarity that ensues. It was a gorgeous fall day for a fun, if quick, trip. We get to see them again this weekend when they are coming up for some cabin time.

 

Wicked

Last Saturday, PB, The Girl and I headed over to Boise to see the touring production of "Wicked". We are big fans here. I started the whole trend accompanying several singers in the vocal studio who sang selections from it. I bought the soundtrack and listened to it endlessly in the car, converting PB and The Girl. When The Girl heard it was coming to Boise, she hounded me continally to get tickets. And I must say, it was well worth the price of admission, and the drive over and back. The production was just simply....amazing. If you ever have the opportunity to go, do it.

This was the view of the curtain. As it was going up, The Girl clutched my arm and said, "I've been waiting for this moment my whole life." Well, she got that moment and bought the t-shirt, too.

Slap That Bass

PB's college audition choir had a concert last week. It was dedicated to jazz...not my favorite music form, but PB got to sing a solo, which was very fun. I find something interesting when I attend these concerts. As his usual accompanist, I play for him almost daily. I also play for his lessons, so I'm very used to hearing him and me together. In this particular concert, I did not play for him. He sang with only a standing bass accompaniment, to go with the song. The title, "Slap That Bass"--George Gershwin song--- refers to a technique of playing the bass. Anyway, when you separate out the very comfortable arrangement of mom and son, something very strange happens. The mother becomes a nervous basket case. I'm sitting in the audience, palms sweaty and that "achy" nervous feeling in my hands, fidgeting until my DH grabs my knee, trying to take a couple of pictures without disturbing anyone around me.

Shaky mom, low light, this is as good as it gets for something like this. He did very well, by the way.

The Dinner

The night before the wedding we had a dinner for family at the Joseph Smith Memorial Building.

It was a beautiful setting and overlooked the spires of the Salt Lake LDS temple, where SD Boy and his bride were married the next morning. I didn't have my camera there, so all these photos were taken by my DDIL #2....thanks, hon!

The food was wonderful and there was a little after dinner entertainment, including the singing of "Kiss the Girl" by all the brothers in attendence. (Eldest couldn't make it until the next morning).

These photos were taken off a piece of video, so they are a little grainy, but you get the idea.

"Go on and KISS THE GIRL!"

Even though...

Even though he only had half a face working, this boy managed to hold his own against an orchestra and did a great job singing as a "Messiah" soloist.

I on the other hand was more nervous than if I was performing.

The Gift

The gift I made for the voice teacher required a little doing. I contacted as many of her past and present students from this area as I could find. I did pretty well thanks to a couple of kids who were on Facebook and passed the word. I asked them to write a few sentences about the teacher/their experience with her and then attach a pictures.

I compiled them into an album that I entitled, "For Good." This comes from a song in the musical "Wicked"...the last 2 lines are, "Because I knew you, I have been changed for good." I used the full lyrics to the song as the title page and followed it with the sentiments from the students. A little blurry here but you get the idea. This is San Diego Boy's and my pages. It was really fun to get and read the responses as they came in. Lots of "Awwww....." moments.

She opened it after the recital and cried. That's when I knew I'd accomplished the goal of letting her know how much she has touched the lives around her. She is such an amazing person and a fantastic teacher. It was well worth the effort to do it.

Recital Recap

It was good. It was really good. His teacher said so, and she's the expert. What was really great was that every person there was someone who had worked with/cared for Preemie Boy in one capacity or other. He sang the socks off every, single piece, including an encore number I'm glad we put together at the last minute. Just a little tour of the evening....

Programs at the entrance. My DDIL#1 put these together. She has amazing graphic design skills and I really appreciated her doing this. It looks so much better than anything I could have done. She even emailed them to Office Max in my town and had them printed up. Very cool.

DH and The Girl had comments between some of the numbers to give Preemie Boy a chance to get a drink and rest his voice just a bit. The Girl's comment before it was her turn....and the comment was because she was nervous, not because she was being snotty about reading the words, "What if I throw up??"

Preemie Boy emoting a little. You'll recall that he has been very stone-faced in the past, so little gestures like this are HUGE progress in his stage presence.

The close up.

The hug from his accompanist, aka me.

Presenting the gift to his awesome voice teacher....more about that tomorrow.

Sometimes I just really wish that all day, every day could be just like this one night.