Fourth-Grade Concert Quips

Vi’s spring concert happened last Wednesday. She sang in the chorus and played in the band.

Several blogworthy observations:

• The choral director was also my choral director. She’s been teaching for 28 years. This fact made me feel…well, seasoned myself. Along these lines…


• I’m pretty sure the band director is younger than I am. (How can that be?) He bought his navy blue concert suit at Target. I know this from Facebook. It’s a good suit. I never would have guessed it came from a box store.


• The chorus was ginormous—130 kids, I think the director said. My favorites (in addition to my own, of course) were:


• The pixy of a girl in the front row, stage left—she wore a light blue dress, dark tights, and white shoes, a sweet fashion faux pas made even sweeter by her earnest singing.


• The hearty boy in the red polo shirt, front row, stage right—he became visibly bored by the fourth song and kept rolling his freshly buzzed head around, admiring the ornate auditorium ceiling.


• They sang a song called “Build Me a World” that brought tears to my eyes (it’s by Ginger Littleton—I couldn’t find the lyrics online, but I found a sound snippet here).


• The band kids were also amusing to watch. They tapped their toes conspicuously and mouthed their rest measures openly: “1-2-3-4 2-2-3-4 3-2-3-4…” Again, the word “earnest” comes to mind. This sincerity will likely be lost in a year or two, avalanched by adolescence. Their apparent unaffectedness delighted me.


• The chorus sang very well. The director sang a solo—a first, she said, in 80-some concerts in her career to this point. That was a treat.


• The band played miraculously. I mean, sure—if blindfolded, I’d have guessed they were beginners. But to think that 8 months ago none of these kids had even touched their instruments, and here they were playing music that sounded intentional, even tolerable to the ears—amazing!

Kudos to the music teachers. My retired-band-director dad might say, of working with such inexperienced musicians (read: squawkers), “Your reward is not on this earth.” But I hope they experience at least part of the reward in the here-and-now.

“If music be the food of love, play on.”—Shakespeare