LCO Concert

Our handbell choir played particularly badly in first service yesterday. Second service went alright, but not great. First service was just....bad. We were not lining up vertically at all. I suspect this was because we never get together before worship to run through the music one time, so people don't have a chance to remember exactly what they are doing prior to performing. Mix that with some anxiety and a fairly difficult piece for an unpolished ensemble and you get...bad. That being said, I feel it is important to point out that I have no intentions of showing up prior to early service to try and run through the piece once, so I don't think there is a remedy for the problem which is feasible. Second service will just always sound better because of the early service run through and our players being more awake.

The LCO concert went really well. I thought the ensemble played even better than we did on the last concert and Beethoven's 1st and March Slave were more interesting than the music on the last concert too. We did, however, get rained on, on stage during the performance. Several nasty thunderstorms blew through the area yesterday afternoon and apparently it was more than the roof of the community college auditorium could handle. Our ex-marine oboe player gracefully scaled a fence back stage barefoot to grab some buckets for us while chatting with me about her days as a marine and how she was going to play for some major military event overseas in a few months and couldn't wait to act like a marine again. So throughout the performance, I was greeted with some dripping directly next to me in a bucket.

Well, now it is time to run off and grab some lunch with a few of the teachers around here in my last week student teaching so...there's a possibility of a second blog in one day because I sort of feel I am cutting my stories from the weekend short...