Christopher, a man of many talents, played in his school concert tonight. I hate to say it, but his 6th grade concert was several levels above what Theresa's 6th grade concert had been 3 years ago. She played flute back then. Besides the children's work and talent, I credit the director, who gave them interesting and challenging pieces and let them rise to the occasion. In Theresa's case, I hate to say it, but the students were held back by being assigned/confined/restricted to playing nursery rhymes at half-speed. Blech. It must have been very painful for the students to play, because it was certainful for the parents to listen to.
But in Christopher's concert case, it was entirely different. The director, Mrs. Williams, really allowed the students to stretch themselves. All through the concert, a very strange thing kept happening too. After every number or two, one or two or several students would get up, run around, change seats, and pick up different instruments. Have you ever watched an orchestra perform Chinese fire drills? What was going on was that several of the students were performing on two or more instruments. That means reading different clefs, and different finger spacings and everything. (Who needs video games?) For one of those numbers, Christopher, who normally sits with the violas in the middle of the 2nd row, switched and picked up the violin right in front of me (me being in the front row of the audience, of course), and I was lucky enough to get a good shot of video of this piece :-) Chris' own handy little camera holds about 10 minutes of video, and I had asked him which pieces from the program I should video. He had told me this one, but he had not told me why. Here it is. requires RealPlayer
