Monday – I started cleaning my office, turned in my course guides, and started passing information on to the next string teachers.

Tuesday – I proctored the French 3 final, wrote a bunch of notes to people, gave one last guitar final to a student who was sick the week before, and sorted the stuff in my office that belongs to me personally.

Wednesday – In the morning I cleaned/organized some more; in the afternoon I supervised locker checkout, then went to Basel to return our rental instruments and say goodbye to Christian Ganter, then had a music department fun night with dinner and a trip to the Badenweiler baths.

Thursday – In the morning I helped with the gym setup for the grad reception, cleaned JB28, vacuumed my office, played in the alumni soccer game, went to my surprise goodbye party/grill-out, and attended Awards Night. My eyes teared up a bit after the quartet played their final performance of Dvořák’s American quartet. All 4 of them have been in orchestra during their time at BFA. Three are seniors and were recognized in various ways – the first violinist and cellist as musician of the year, the first violinist as Outstanding Citizen of BFA, and the violist as valedictorian. What a talented group!

Friday – Graduation (which will get its own post), lots of goodbyes to students, reception, and a goodbye barbecue with my WorldVenture family.

Saturday – Picnic lunch with Katie, processing time/ catching up on emails in the afternoon, all-staff barbecue for dinner, and the epic destruction of the unfortunate statue that has been guarding my office for 4 years. This will also receive its own post.

Sunday – Church, a run up to Hoch Blauen, hanging out with a few small group girls who are still in town, and I’ll be heading out to soccer soon!

Instrument Petting Zoo

On Monday and Tuesday, I helped out with the instrument try-outs at the elementary and middle school. Some of the time I helped with the string tryouts, while other times my focus was on the brass instruments. It was a bit of a zoo, though it was fun to see the kids get their hands on instruments. Some struggled to produce a sound, while others seemed to find an instant addiction to a particular instrument, much in the way I did when I tried a violin for the first time ever.

Intermediate Orchestra

On Monday, we had a wrap-up orchestra party. When I walked in the door, the kids surprised me with a “card” drawn on the board! We talked about the Spring Concert, sight-read a couple pieces for fun, cleaned up with our fastest time ever of 10 seconds, and had time for snacks and talking. What a fun group! They have grown so much in the last year!

Guitar Class 

On Monday and Tuesday, the class had prep time for their worship final, then two days of students leading worship (the second half of their final exam). On Friday, we went outside during out last class time and just spent time together enjoying the beautiful weather.

Lessons

Starting Tuesday, I had my last lesson with each of my private students. It was a time of looking back at personal and musical growth achieved throughout the year, looking ahead to plans for next year, and enjoying one last “present” moment with some sort of fun musical thing, like sight-reading duets by the creek or improvising. I made sure to get a picture of each student for my own personal memories; here are a few of my students:

My students show impressive skill at expressing appreciation in subtle ways. It took me half a day to notice a handmade card and chocolate tucked into my things by a surreptitious student. Others surprised me with kind words of appreciation, though they had struggled in lessons.  Other students gave me the kind of hug that meant more than words could ever express. It was an emotionally draining week, pouring so much into each person one last time.

High School Orchestra

This last week was full of random variety as well as meaningful wrap-up. On Monday and Tuesday we watched the video of our Chamber Music concert, and viewed another video of a full orchestra to identify some wind, brass and percussion instruments. On Wednesday, Karen Rempel came in and did a session on the Alexander Technique. As we became aware of our center of gravity, we spent some time lying on the floor. This progressed to a fascination with the difference in gravitational pull felt when playing an instrument while lying on the floor versus playing in an upright position.

Thursday was a fun day of instrument exploration. All the students rotated to another instrument in the string orchestra and attempted to quickly learn the differences in technique and note reading. We played a couple beginning-level pieces with moderate success. As a result of this day, a couple of my cellists now want to become bass players, and one violinist is seriously thinking about learning viola for next year!

Friday was our wrap-up day. We celebrated an amazing semester by going to the EisCafe, filling out course evaluations, handing out certificates, handing out personal notes to each student, and discussing Isaiah 59-60 and how we will spread God’s light into various parts of the world as we disperse. This is a special group of people, and I will miss them.

* * *

It was an exhausting week, but adrenaline kept me going. Friday I finally let the tears loose, allowing myself to feel all the emotions that had been kept in check by the speed of the week’s events.

Last Sunday was the big Spring Concert, the final big event in the music department. In many ways, it was the culmination of my time at BFA, or at least of this semester. For all of us as ensemble directors, this concert is a time to show what our students have learned in the last semester or year. Ensembles represented were Choirs, Bands, Orchestras, Hand Drums, and Guitar Class.

This semester’s guitar class wasn’t the fastest moving class I’ve had, but they managed to pull together a solid performance. The audience’s favorite was “We’re Going to be Friends” by The White Stripes. Last semester’s performance of the Mario Bros. Theme might have been the highlight of my time teaching guitar, but this concert was a solid ending to a class that has worked harder to get where they are.

Intermediate Orchestra sounded fantastic. Their sound had definitely matured since the Christmas Concert. I could hardly believe that some of them have only been playing for 2 years now! The final piece they played was music from “Pirates of the Caribbean,” which they performed as a combined piece with high school orchestra. It was exciting and impressive, and we had a fun surprise with pirate hats!

High School Orchestra was able to showcase the incredible talent we had this semester. Most of the group stayed constant from first to second semester, although we gained a couple strong players (including our only high school violist). This meant that not only did we have talented students in the group, we also had the advantage of continuity, the ability for the group to grow together throughout the year.

The first piece was “Lord of the Rings” with some musicians from Intermediate Band. Lord of the Rings has melodies reminiscent of English folk tunes, so the next selection was an actual English folk song called “The Turtledove.” It is a goodbye song. When I was in high school playing in the Elgin Youth Symphony, we always played Randy Swiggum’s arrangement of this song as a goodbye to our seniors in our last concert of the year. This year, the high school orchestra continued the tradition by playing my own string arrangement as a goodbye to the seniors, as well as my goodbye to BFA. Here are the lyrics of one of the verses:

Fare you well, my dear, I must be gone
and leave you for a while
Though I go away, I’ll come back again
Though I roam 10,000 miles my dear,
Though I roam 10,000 miles.

After playing Turtledove, Katie Roberts gave me a little goodbye tribute, along with flowers and a beautiful piece of Kandern pottery. I will miss working in this department at BFA!

We ended with two movements of Tchaikovsky’s “Serenade for Strings,” the second and fourth (Waltz and Finale: Tema Russo) One of my cellists, Sunshine, was pushing the tempo. At the end of the piece, we went faster than we had probably ever gone before. Though I was giving him stern looks as he pushed forward, he grinned gleefully at me and the rest of the orchestra as we raced to the end of the piece. After the big Tchaikovsky ending, the whole orchestra was stifling smiles and giggles. They had pulled it off at a fast tempo! People in the audience commented afterwards that it looked like there was some kind of an inside joke within the orchestra.

This orchestra has been my favorite part of this semester. They have been so responsive, so eager, and so willing to learn. They have natural talent, yet they want to grow. They have worked well together as friends, musicians, and brothers and sisters in Christ. I will miss them greatly!

I really have loved teaching here at BFA. My first year, the lessons may have been my favorite part, or perhaps the great variety of jobs I was able to do, such as helping in the dorms. For my second and third years, I would have said the Intermediate Orchestra was my favorite part of teaching here. This year, Guitar class first semester and High School Orchestra second semester were my favorites. What great variety! Only God could have known how much I would have enjoyed teaching all these different ensembles and lessons. I am thanking God yet again for these four years at BFA. He has stretched me and prodded me to grow, and showered this music department with growth of another kind during this time. On top of the growth of a string program, there is the more subtle individual growth of the students throughout this process.

Now, as I prepare to leave, there is a part of me that fears seeing the orchestra diminish in size, or change in some way. Yet it’s not mine. I place it in God’s hands, where it already is and always has been. I am reminded that the orchestra program, whole music department, and indeed the whole school are still in God’s trustworthy control. God gives the growth; I’m happy to have been one of the people watering (see 1 Corinthians 3:5-7).

At the end, I played a Kreisler piece, Liebesfreud, as a special treat for the audience. Several of the residents told me they were sad to see me go. 

In the last month, I began looking at things in a slightly different way. Rather than only seeing the things I would be losing and holding on to them, I started seeing the things I could bring back to Illinois with me. Some of those are tangible items, like the mugs hand-made by students in ceramics class, German books, and so on. There are a great deal more things, however, that are a bit more difficult to nail down. For the rest of my life, I will carry certain memories, skills, and aspects of my character that have been shaped by this time in Germany. There are even some relationships that, though they will change, will still continue into the next phase of my life.

This week, I have reached a different stage in my transition. Lasts. Goodbyes. Letting go. I’ve cried 3 times this week, which is not normal for me. It’s normal for this part of transition, though.

This week, Tuesday was my last Staff Appreciation Dinner. Friday will be the last nursing home performance after school. Sunday will be the last Spring Concert. Monday will be the last Intermediate Orchestra time, and in the evening our last Small Group time. All next week from Tuesday to Friday I will be giving the last lesson to each of my private lesson students. Next Friday will be the last day of High School Orchestra and Guitar Class. I’m tearing up just thinking about saying goodbye to some of these kids! Suffice it to say that next week will be an emotionally draining week.

After next week’s goodbyes to students, I’ll be saying goodbye to my friends, my fellow staff members. Some of these people are the closest friends I have ever known. That hasn’t fully hit me yet… maybe I’m trying to avoid thinking about leaving them. At any rate, it’s enough to be thinking about student goodbyes for now.

I’m also in the process of saying goodbye to all my favorite running routes. My plan is to run each route with camera in hand whenever the sun is shining, or at least when it’s not raining. I’ll eventually start a facebook album of pictures from each one. So far, I’ve done 3 of my routes. Here’s a small sampling of one of the things I will miss the most about living in Germany:

Lately, I’ve started letting go of things. There are some things I want to hold onto, but in my prioritizing, that means other things get dropped (like a consistent sleep schedule). I’m letting go of routine, as well. Normally I like to stick to my schedule, but things are just happening at a whirlwind pace this week. Part of me is feeling unsettled – not having time to process everything that’s going on, wishing I could at least depend on my schedule to be the same as always. Part of me, though, has embraced this unstable feeling. It’s kind of thrilling to take things as they come.

Transition is a very unstable time. The people, places and things that have been my life and my home for the last 4 years will be shifting very very soon. My future life is very uncertain right now; I know I’m living with my parents, but that’s about it. 1 Samuel 2:2 says, “There is no rock like our God.” So even when everything else changes and is uncertain, God is unchanging. God is certain. He knows my path. I can trust Him.

I chaperoned a group of 4 girls and 2 boys, most of whom are in Intermediate Orchestra. It was a fun, adventurous group – they all wanted to ride the biggest roller coasters.

A highlight of the day for me was riding my favorite roller coaster, the Blue Fire, twice! The line was relatively short around lunch time, so we jumped on the opportunity to ride it twice!

The one big coaster I didn’t go on was the Silver Star. Most of our group went, but my brave little 11-year-old cellist was 1 centimeter too short to ride it (see above picture), so I waited with her. At the end of the day, we were all exhausted and happy. The weather was great, the rides were exciting, and the kids were able to spend a fun day with friends.

Marit’s quartet practiced first thing in the morning. It was a good chance to work out a few issues and get used to the sound in the auditorium. They then performed at the nursing home behind Hieber’s. They made a few mistakes they had never made before, but held it together quite well. They got their jitters out through that performance, and the old folks thoroughly enjoyed hearing Beethoven and Dvořák.

After a lunch consisting of pizza, veggies, and Marit’s homemade cookies, it was time for orchestra to rehearse. We dove into Tchaikovsky, working out a few final technical issues and delving into the images and stories portrayed by each movement of the String Serenade. Then we went over to the nursing home next door and performed. I heard a few residents making comments like, “These are master classical musicians!” and “Top quality!” At the end of the performance, I invited the residents to our concert the following evening.

A couple people videotaped our performance on that Friday, May 10 – the Chamber Music Concert. I don’t have those videos yet, but once I do I’ll post them here on my blog!

During lunch one day, I talked with Natalie, one of the English teachers at BFA, about the concept of an elegy. At the time, she was discussing In Memoriam, a poem by Tennyson, in her English class. I asked, “What’s the difference between and elegy and a eulogy?” She said, “A eulogy is specifically in memory of a person who has died. It may honor them or acknowledge the things they did in life. An elegy, on the other hand, is about loss. It can be loss of a person, but it could also be loss of something else, like identity or possessions.”

Tchaikovsky had a good deal of sadness, turmoil and loss in his life. In orchestra the next day, we connected some of the themes of Tchaikovsky’s life, including his possible loss of identity, with the movement. On a reflection sheet, one student commented that the clashing rhythms create an undercurrent of tension in the movement, possibly displaying his emotional battle.

We also connected some of the feelings of loss we experience in our own lives: loss of friends, family, and home when we move. After that discussion, they all played the movement differently – from their hearts. These kids all know loss.

First, we went to the shop of a Luthier, or violin-maker. Our students rent from Christian Ganter in Riehen, Switzerland, and he was quite happy to give a small presentation on the history of violin making. He also briefly described the process of making a violin, and worked on a couple instruments that our students had brought in. The students drank in the information. Marit and I even learned some new things, too! For instance, we learned that the horsehair for the bows comes from the tails of male Mongolian horses.

After an intense learning session, we had a relaxing lunch break in Basel, complete with McDonald’s and Starbucks. Then we went to the Basel Musikmuseum, which hosts a fascinating collection of historical instruments.

It was a great day, and our students now know much more about the beautiful instruments they play!