Performance Diary

This past Sunday I helped my great nieces perform in their little country church (celebrating its 120th year). One 12 yr old started trumpet last September and the other started flute. The 6 yr old and the 4 yr old sang. The Reverend Crawford H from my regular group joined us with his E flat tuba to supply bass line (and because I so enjoyed playing with a group with a 75 yr difference between the oldest and youngest player).

All went well, particularly on our instrumental version of The Church in the Wildwood. The first run through was me playing alto line on flute with the flute playing soprano and Crawford on bass. The second time through I switched to horn on alto line of the chorus while the trumpet played the lead. The third time through was trumpet and flute on lead, horn on alto and tuba on bass. 

Perhaps the best thing was that things having gone well, the girls are eager to perform again, so we'll probably take the show on the road to the nursing home before school starts up again.

Two weeks ago I made a CD with them of a complete run through of our performance for them to practice with. They used that CD and were completely comfortable with the sequence of singing and instrumental solos, and the little ones used it to get the words of the songs down. 

The practice CD was so successful it makes me think something like that would be really helpful in the materials for learning I'm developing. Unlike a music minus one CD, I talked through who was doing what while playing and singing so that there were plenty of cues to follow. The idea would be to create CDs to jam with more than to play one particular part. That also allows for more than one to play along at the same time.