Spring Band Concerts

The end of the school year is crazy - parties, field days, concerts, recitals, finals, field trips, awards presentations, and a billion other reasons why I end up being at my kids schools way more than usual.  Add on our regular daily routine, home life, and church responsibilities, and life seems to be moving faster than ever with barely enough time to sit down and catch my breath between activities. One thing that I do look forward to at the end of the school year is the spring band concerts mostly because I love seeing how much they have improved since the Christmas concerts in December!

Abigail's concert was first and, seeing as it was beginning band, I didn't have very high expectations.  However, they really have made big strides since Christmas.  At the concert in December they were playing all of their songs in unison, so every instrument was playing the melody line.  Even if one kid was playing the flute and another the trumpet, they would both be playing the same notes on their respective instruments.  At the spring concert they were playing parts and sounded much more developed musically; not bad for six months of playing their instruments.

Another exciting thing at Abby's concert was the small group performances.  Their band teacher let a few groups work independently on pieces that they chose themselves.  Abigail was part of two groups; in the first one she played Kumbayah, and in the second she was half of a duet that she performed with her friend Abby from church.  Abby U. introduced the song, saying that they wanted to play this song because they wanted to do something to show their love for their mothers especially because the concert fell right before Mother's Day.  Then they proceeded to play Love is Spoken Here on trumpet and saxophone and I proceeded to cry through the entire song.  It was a total surprise and so, so sweet.

Emily's concert was just two days after Abigail's and she was running around like crazy through the entire thing.  She plays both bass clarinet and regular old clarinet so in between songs she would move from her seat in the front (and her regular clarinet) to her seat in the back (and her bass clarinet.)  She even got to play the cowbell for one of the songs because one of the percussionists had been suspended so he couldn't play at the concert.  I wish I had taken a picture of the huge, giddy smile that was on her face when the director handed Emily the cowbell right before the song began.  

She also somehow became the spokesperson for the band when they were thanking their director for all her help and work this year and she also introduced two songs they learned to go along with the Civil War unit the eighth grade has been working on in their History and Language Arts classes.

Before any concert officially begins at the middle school here the principal invites all the parents to come to the front and take a few pictures of their musician before they begin playing. I think it's a great practice because it can be difficult to get a decent picture during the concert without moving to the front of the room and being a distraction and a bad audience member. This way I get a good shot of the girls with their instruments in their concert clothes and then during the concert I can just sit and enjoy the music.  Unfortunately, they don't do the same thing at Madison's school so I can never get a good photo of her with her instruments. I doesn't help that at the high school concerts are played in the gymnasium with the audience on the bleachers and Madison is all the way in the back with the percussionists.

I did take some videos of the songs Madison thought we would enjoy the most.  I can't remember the name of this piece, but it's one I recognized and enjoyed.  Madison played the timpani for this song and I love that you can really see her drumsticks going!  It's a rather long song, but if you just want to see Madison doing her thing watch at least the first two minutes and the final minute.  There is also a good drum section in the middle, somewhere between 3:20 and 4:00 minutes.