Shoe-guy piano quintet

Erin received her violin part for her string quartet in Edmonton & Montreal and her piano part for her piano quintet back home here for the VSSM the same week. The former was a Schubert piece, the latter a Schumann work. So we talked about the Shoe-guys she was playing this summer. Because she was on her own in Edmonton and Montreal I don't have a video of the quartet performances. But tonight, after being corralled as a page-turner for my kid, I handed the video camera off to Chuck and he recorded the Schumann.

It was a dynamite chamber group she was in this week. At the first rehearsal on Monday when she saw the 1st violinist's cue for the downbeat she realized "holy ___, this is going to be fast!" and her eyes lit up and her adrenaline started pumping and her fingers started their happy fast dance across the keys. She'd been working on the music as the situation allowed for the month or so prior (a challenge given that she was in the midst of scores of hours of string music programming away from home), but she didn't realize who was going to be in the ensemble. When she arrived and saw that these were the students who had been at the top end of the VSSM a year or two ago, it was clear she'd been placed in a rather different league. She ramped up the tempo and thrilled at the challenge.

I think she did a phenomenal job. I hadn't heard any of the rehearsals, so I was as awed and thrilled as everyone else at the performance. And I was right in the thick of it, turning pages, wondering how this kid of mine could possibly be playing all those notes! I am not a pianist, which increases my awe many-fold.