Hannah's First Concert

I took all the kids to the camp concert today. It was the shortest camp concert yet coming in at just a hair over and hour and a half. We were concerned about how well Hannah would do considering that she babbles all day long and when we ask her to be quiet she looks at us and continues talking as if she has no idea what we are saying--which she does. She did really well. There were just a few times when she would say "MA!" and then remember that she was to be quiet. She LOVED the music. She conducted, bounced up and down, swayed back and forth, and played with her shoes the entire time. OK....there were a couple of restless moments. Once I thought that she was going to have a tantrum, but she managed to pull herself together and move on. She loved clapping when the pieces were over. She was also a bit anxious the whole time and started her self-soothing action which involves a lot of scratching; she will scratch herself until she bleeds. We try to distract her which only works some of the time.

Today's concert was performances by all the small ensembles. Tomorrow, we get to go to another concert which will be all the large ensembles performing; the pianists will be playing their solo pieces that they worked on all week. This particular group of Junior High pianists has been fun to teach. I judged a competition this past spring and many of these pianists were in that competition; it was fun for me to get to know them outside of the "competition arena." This group seemed to be more about having fun than focusing on their piano playing, but they will leave tomorrow having made new friends whose interests match their own. Actually, a few of them don't want to leave tomorrow. Most of them plan on returning next year, it is always rewarding for me to see them return and hear how they have grown during the school year.