Well, this is something I never thought I'd get to post about--me being in a choir concert with my daughters! And son-in-law! And his mom, dad, two brothers, and sister (their last names took up half of the second column :)!
The first concert was in coordination with a local high school, but only one of their performers was there, practicing for his solo for an upcoming state competition. This made the audience numbers pretty minimal--Buck and G$, Gabby's sister-in-law and her three boys, and the music director of the school, (maybe the solo kid's parents?). Oh, and the guy on the floor scrubber who curiously puttered past the auditorium during one of our songs, lol!
Overall, I didn't mind, because the lights are so bright, you literally cannot see the audience anyway. The atmosphere was casual and even a little bit silly. We started the concert and I thought we were still practicing! I haven't done riser entries and exits since elementary school, so being in a music room and then navigating the stepped-up stage stirred up memories from the waaaay distant past. In contrast, the theater's renovations were only a year old, and we were the first community choir to use it--it still has that "new car" smell :) Old things and new things coming together!
We ladies had never practiced our songs with the guys' choir behind us, so that was a new experience. I did my best to listen for Caelan, so I could find the right notes. I think most of the time we were successful! I lost my place in the music only a couple of times, but could lip sync along when necessary "to find the plaaaace" (that's one of the lines in one of our songs ;)
After our nine audience members cheered for us (not sure where the scrubber guy ended up), the choir director pointed out a bunch of cool things about people in the choir that I didn't know. For the most part, we don't really even know anyone's names, so the director thought we should fix that for next semester . . . NEXT semester?! I hadn't thought about a *next,* yet :) It sounds like there may be a summer bbq in the works . . .
I felt very glad that Buck could be at our first concert, because who knows when we'll be able to do something like this together again? I loved that the girls (and Chase) wanted me to be part of this experience with them. And I even got my first performance flowers from Buck, who made sure we three all had that special extra at the end of the show 💗
Our second concert was in concert with the college kids :) They did their songs (same groups Caelan sang in not so long ago) and then we did our songs. Seated in the very front rows, we could see them singing along to our cool Rocketman medley and, of course, Total Eclipse of the Heart--the entire concert was loosely based around the solar eclipse. Before we began another song, our director would tell the audience, "This piece is really hard." He said that about most of them actually :) We got to sing some gospel, Broadway (Sunrise, Sunset), a Mozart piece in Latin, and my favorite, Walking on Sunshine! I wake up with the lyrics to these songs ringing through my brain :) I wish I could get the videos to load, but there is something about the format of the new phone camera that I can't get to mesh with the blog. You will just have to imagine the beauty and enthusiasm of our performances ;) Hey, the college kids gave us a standing ovation! I told Noah, who kept Herbie in check during the show, "That was my first standing ovation--actually, that was my first ovation!" Brennen and Graysen also attended, along with my NGF and her family. We definitely had a bigger audience for the second round.
I only got a couple pictures of the men's choir to share, but I thought it was fun that Gabby, her mother-in-law, then me, then Caelan got to make up our own row on the risers! And after the performance, when we'd turned in our sheet music, I thanked Chase for inviting me to be part of this with him and the others, and he gave me a great big hug :)
Yay, for trying something new. Yay, for choir!
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