XMas Programs/Recitals/Etc.

(I apologize in advance for the spacing on this post, depending what your screen resolution, and window size, this could look pretty ugly)

I find myself at the end of a busy week of children's Christmas programs, wherein parents, grandparents and resentful siblings were able to see the culmination of hours, days, and weeks (and sometimes entire minutes) of preparation on the parts of many, only to watch those who we get to see and hear too much of at home.

We started the week with Samwise and a group of guitar classmates performing during a veritable (and interminable) cavalcade of acoustic performances from the secondary students at his school. Samwise was, for reasons beyond my ken, enrolled in the beginning guitar class and so was playing with people who've been playing for 3 months. They had a lot of fun doing a "funny" little song they wrote. Results varied beyond them. 14 hours after that, the audience members that hadn't fled were released, relatively unharmed.

The next night, Arnold and the Princess got to strut their stuff in the elementary classes program. As you can see from this picture of the Princess I took right before showtime, we had seats in the a good distance away from the stage, and more clearly, I need a better camera. It was a very ambitious program of singing, dancing and recorder playing. I won't say that very few of the kids had talents commensurate with the ambition of the music teacher, but, um... it was cute.






And hey, did I mention, there were recorders? Yup, 90 4^th and 5^th graders played "Frosty the Snowman" on recorders. Several of which had the same key. (if you use your imagination, you can see a pink recorder in her hands there...see above paragraph).






I thought they did a really good job integrating all the grades into the program, and shuffled it up enough that even the shortest of attention spans weren't pushed too far past the breaking point. Someday, I would like someone to explain exactly how this position
represents a partridge in a pear tree, though.






Today, Arnold's music academy put on a recital--we had a flautist, a guitar player, a clarinet wrangler and several pianists perform a song each for us. I was quite impressed with the range of ages and abilities shown, and despite the nerves, they all did a great job. I was, naturally, very impressed with Arnold's playing, this was better than any time I've heard him practice. Thankfully, it was a small crowd, so I was able to shoot a video.