Three days ago, I crossed the 50k mark for NaNoWriMo 2009. Also three days ago, I got to see one of my favorite people ever. Even better, she’ll be at my house for the next few weeks. Needless to say, happiness abounds around here.
Hope is simply amazing, and I am pretty much amazingly blessed to have her for three weeks. I have a feeling we’ll enjoy ourselves…but maybe that’s just me?
Camp is over. It’s July 27th, which feels pretty strange—like half the summer is gone before it even got here. As for last night’s performance, it went amazingly well. I can’t remember any mistakes or errors. It was a blast, and I think the audience enjoyed it.
Unfortunately, we had unforeseen technical difficulties. We were being filmed for DVDs and (hopefully) TV broadcasting at a later date. But as it turns out, the audio “hiccupped,” and come the end of the show, the tech crew didn’t have audio for a good portion of the footage.
So guess what?
We played it all again. Maybe about a third of the show…probably less, but it felt like a lot. We got out around 10:30.
But all in all, it was amazing. We said lots of goodbyes and exchanged lots of email addresses. The hardest part about leaving, for me, was realizing that I’d only started really hanging out with friends over the past two or three days…and we’d had a whole two weeks together. Makes me wish I hadn’t waited so long to be sociable.
Overall FASA experience: awesome.
The viola section, minus a few. We had a blast.
We finished our first performance a few hours ago—and all told, it was pretty amazing. We’d never run the whole thing straight through, but now that we’ve managed it with only minor problems, I think tomorrow night’s show will go smoothly. It’s being filmed for television, so…it better go smoothly.
All the orchestra and band on stage for rehearsal. We’ve been spending a lot of time in those seats lately!
Tuning up for the performance.
Micaela, Tinsley and I had way too much fun waiting to get on stage.
We tried a serious pose…
*epic fail*
I’m really looking forward to tomorrow night. Seems strange that it’ll all be over—in one sense, this is the most exciting part of camp. I guess I won’t miss playing for at least six hours a day, but it’ll be interesting adjusting back to “normal life.”
…before the plunge into Week 2. A few pictures from the past two days:
Going out to eat on Toni’s birthday.
Me and Toni.
I think she like her laptop…
Testing out the webcam on a bunch of willing victims.
We enjoyed eating unhealthy stuff.
We got ready for a performance…
…and we performed.
The totally rockin’ viola section!
FASA is intense—orchestra in the mornings and afternoons, and classes all in between. But intense music camps or no, nothing shall rob me of my reading. Especially when it comes to Ted Dekker.
So. How many places can one find to read Dekker at music camp?
Day Two is complete! Things are beginning to make more sense as everyone figures out what they’ll be doing in the days ahead—and, uh, some people still work on figuring it out. I’m liking the new additions to camp this year, particularly the technique class. I’m an incredibly un-technical player, probably due to being largely self-taught.
This is “my” seat. As you can tell, I’m very happy there.
Behold, the string orchestra! This is where we spend a good portion of the day.
Viola power.
And here’s the whole group of us (plus a random neighbor kid on the left), being wild as usual. We’re having a fun time.
I love the way little children phrase things—absolutely adorable. The above was from four-year-old Jennifer (who thinks five minutes is way too many). We’ve got quite a handful of kids running around this place, totaling to nine ages twelve and under. Throw in Mother May I, a staircase, and few thousand dollars worth of stringed instruments, and we’re in for some excitement!
Tonight concludes our first day of camp, which was really only an introduction to what we’ll be doing for the next two weeks. I’m pretty excited, myself. The orchestra has around fifty members total, and a whopping twelve violas. Playing in a “viola section” is absolutely foreign to me; usually, I am the “viola section.”
At check-in, we ran into two familiar faces: Taylor and Hailey from HSB, along with several of their friends! It was fun having a real, live person to fit to the name—and it’s also nice knowing someone when the whole campus of David Lipscomb is filled with strangers. Taylor and Hailey, by the way, are super sweet. Y’all should go over and say hello.
And now, we’re back at home. I’m sitting in the rocker listening to the kids get ready for bed and contemplating how I’ll extricate myself from the maze of mattresses on the floor. Hm…
…this could be a problem.
Sunday evening was our spring orchestra concert, and an amazingly fun event. We performed pieces from Pirates of the Caribbean, The Chronicles of Narnia, and The Patriot—I love movie soundtracks. And, for our community orchestra, we did pretty well.
My dad taped most of the songs, but due to technical difficulties (okay, due to my impatience to deal with the technical difficulties) I’ve only uploaded the Irish medley Toni, Katy and I performed at the end. Musicians, please ignore the fact that my violin is woefully out of tune. You may now proceed:
Or, in plain English, “Ireland forever!” Two of our friends, Josh and Abby, are over for a couple nights, and with so many musicians in one place it was simply impossible to let an occasion like St. Patrick’s Day pass without a musical tribute. So I present our very own Irish session music—probably “traditional” only in the fact that we had no idea where we’d end up when we started.
Excuse the annoying information bar across the top. Someday I’ll figure out our video camera.
Towards the middle of last week (Wednesday? Thursday?), my friend Josh asked if I’d be willing to help perform some music for him. As it turns out, he was making a last-minute composition as background music for a skit that will be performed in Honduras by a small group from our church—and he had all of about two days to write the music, notate it, get our group together for a practice session, and record. Talk about cramming. I’d be hard-pressed to come up with a simple melody line in that time, but somehow Josh pulled together a piece for piano, two violins, viola, and cello. (What’s that, a piano quintet? I’m not sure.)
Saturday found us at the church building, recording the song. It’s amazingly impressive! You can hear the entire piece in the media player above. I wish I’d had a bit more time to practice those shifts…ah, well. Try to excuse our less-than-perfect performance; the music itself is awesome. Most of the melody you’ll hear is my sister Toni on first violin, accompanied by Josh on piano, my sister Katy on second violin, and our friend Lydia on cello. I’d rather not point out my few lines of melody…
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