Christmas Concert

The Christmas Concert finally arrived!

Gustav has a new hat....and I'm not sure who put it there!

Due to Gustav’s brilliant advertising techniques, there was a large crowd of supportive parents, friends, teachers, and dorm staff at the Christmas Concert today (Sunday).

Though the concert started at 15:00 (that’s 3:00 pm for those who are not familiar with the 24-hour system), there was much that happened first.

At 9:45am, the orchestra girls and I played Christmas trios as people walked into church.

Christmas Carols outside BFCF

After church, we had sound checks until the concert. The Strings sound check was from 12:30-13:00. I was a little nervous when 3 of my students were nowhere to be found 5 minutes before the sound check, but everybody showed up. It was kind of chaotic and complicated because most of the kids were in more than one group (middle school choir, high school choir, sign team, etc.). After the sound check, the group dispersed – some went to finish eating lunch, and others had sound checks for other groups.

Since I wanted to go over a few things before the concert, I found as many people in random places (a stairwell, the student center, the foyer, etc.) and told them to meet  at 2:30. This worked fairly well – almost everyone met up, tuned, walked through the various seating changes, and got the music in order. A few straggled in late, but eventually everyone was present and prepared.

3:00 was show time. The piano ensemble played, a choir sang, and then it was our turn.

In this first section, the orchestra played the Russian dance from Nutcracker, then Evening Prayer from Hansel and Gretel (by Engelbert Humperdinck – what a great name!). The Nutcracker was a great way to start off – exciting, well-known, and not too long. Evening Prayer provided a nice contrast, but fit with the Christmas fairy tale theme.

Then a couple more choirs sang, and we were up again playing Shepherd’s Hey, the Pastorale Movement from Corelli’s Christmas Concerto, and my own arrangement of 3 Christmas carols.

The concert went very well. There were only a few minor glitches with stands and chairs, but I’ll know better for next time. The kids played really well. I’m so proud of them – several of them had extra practice sessions with each other on their own to make sure they knew the parts. My cellist was coaching several of the other players just to help them out. Now that is teamwork!

I don’t have any pictures of myself conducting, but Rachel took video of the 5 pieces. If you’re on facebook, I’ll have them up pretty soon for all to see – it just takes a while to upload videos. If you’re my mom or dad, I’ll give you my own facebook login info so you can sign in and watch the videos. If you’re David, you don’t need to watch the videos on facebook because you can watch them here on my computer on Friday when you come!!!! (I’m a little excited, can you tell?)

More Christmas pictures:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2043174&id=187701865&l=f13a2d7d1d