A stringy week

This is how full my hard drive is. The pink bit is all that's left for my poor Windows XP to work with. Things are slow as molasses here and I certainly can't put new things on my computer right now. You'll have to be patient if I don't upload a lot of photos or videos just now. There's a bottleneck in the data flow. A new secondary hard drive is on the way. When that arrives my iPod will no longer have more memory than my desktop computer.


Today at the Suzuki Institute my elder two kids performed on solo recitals. They both blew me away. Noah's Bach Allemande was so sensitive and clean, musical and unrestrained, but yet still rhythmic and flowing. Erin's Bloch was a technical wonder full of power and passion. I did manage to squeeze a low-res still shot off the video camera. Somehow a tie-dye T-shirt doesn't fit with "an improvisational scene from Hasidic life," but you can trust me that the music fit the mood the composer had intended.

Once my hard drive arrives and the institute wraps up I'll have time to upload proper photos and videos. I'm taking them -- they'll just have to reside on tape and memory cards for a little while yet.

String games have taken the institute by storm. Cat's cradle and a zillion more. We have two faculty members who are experts, one of whom is teaching the kids tricks as part of their movement/folk-dance class and the other who is sharing freely of her expertise outside of class time. The stuff has caught on like wildfire and the faculty seem as caught up in it as anyone else.

Here's a typical scene from the lobby area ... kids eagerly watching, learning, sharing, waiting a turn with Marian, string loops in hand. They delightedly tried out string tricks on each other, on their parents, and on other faculty members.

There was a brief polite reminder necessary before the recital started today ... "strings in pockets, please." I love it when something this simple catches on like this, especially when it crosses generational boundaries and brings assorted dyads and triads of people together for fun and eager learning.