Big music weekend

It started on Friday evening. We hosted a 2-hour workshop / rehearsal with an accompanist. Saturday brought three more such workshop sessions for my various kids and students.

Then at 5 pm that day we headed off to Nelson. To mark Canada Music Week there was a piano recital featuring all Canadian music. Fiona performed out of her (Canadian) primer book, and Erin did a minimalist Alexina Louie piece called "Changes." I think she would rather have done the much more challenging François Morel Concert Etude she's been working up, but it wasn't quite ready, being quite new to her. Fiona was terminally cute, the tiniest participant by far as you can see in the group photo. That's Erin positioned directly above/behind Fiona. Anyway, it was a fine recital, Fiona's first on piano, and we got home at bedtime.

Today we got up in time to begin the schedule of dress rehearsals in preparation for today's local string recital. Rehearsals ran throughout the morning. Then there was a short break and the afternoon performance.

So that has meant two recitals in the space of 20 hours on two different instruments in two different towns. The kids are going to just hang out tonight. I have to make an out-of-town trip this evening to pick up some fundraising stuff, but they are just going to hang out, maybe watch a video and eat popcorn.

It turns out there are only four more performances until Christmas -- one for the local choir that Erin and Noah sing in, two for Erin's youth choir in Nelson and one for the orchestra. Fiona, who is totally into playing Christmas tunes on the piano, would like to participate in a couple of informal 'living room recitals,' but preparation for those is minimal so they don't really count. So I think we can handle the rest of the performance slate easily. Most years it's been busier than this. But I'm still glad to be done with all the busy stuff from this weekend.