Performance!

The girls did their performance tonight - five pieces from the choir and seven pieces from the recorder ensemble. A few hitches... When I got there, the keyboard was plugged into the sound system and it sounded HORRIBLE. Fortunately, necessity brings on ingenuity where none existed and I figured out how to fix it. Good thing we scheduled the rehearsal for 5:00, since we didn't get going until 5:30. Also, the air wasn't working and it was 90 degrees offstage, probably more under the stage lights. Phew! One sweaty performance. They did get it working, and by the end of the concert it was only 80ish on stage. Finally, after several iterations of the program had gone around, the recorder program ended up being utterly deleted. Not sure what happened there, but oh well. I might make my own to add to my own records. :)

The last glitch turned out great. The final recorder piece we were to play three times: 1) all recorders, 2) voice and barred instruments, and 3) recorder and barred instruments. When we got to #2, the voice people didn't transition to vocal parts quickly enough so they missed their entry. NO ONE was phased by this. The barred instruments went on with their parts and I signaled for them to do it again, and the voices came in and did their part. The same thing happened between the #2 version and #3 version, but it didn't matter. They pulled it off seamlessly anyway. I was so proud! Something like this, especially for beginners, can really throw you for a loop. They carried on as if it was supposed to be that way! Flexible thinkers. Improvisers. Excellent musical skills to have. Hooray!

Other than those things, everything went off without a hitch. Oh, wait, there was the little problem of having bifocals and no music stand on the keyboard. The music was lying flat in indirect light, so that was a little, um, challenging... But again, it all came out fine. Happy music teacher.

We have three more classes left before school is out, so we're going to spend them working on compositions and arranging them for the various instruments in the classroom. They're excited about that, and so am I!