Recital day! Recital day! La La La La.....how many recitals have I hosted now? Well, two a year for the past 8 years? You would think I would learn to simmer down. I'm getting better though. Really.
I spent the day alternately scrubbing things that no one would see and throwing myself on the couch to complain about my stress headache. Oh Myrnie. You're so...Myrnie. Aunt LoLo happened to be going to Costco right when I called her in a crisis to ask if I should get cake or cookies. We decided on cookies (good choice) and she grabbed them for me. Yay sisters!!
I taught piano in the afternoon, and made another good dinner: I am on a roll. J fried pork chops on the stove while I made sauteed mushrooms, one-pot linguine, and a salad. Nom nom. I could get used to have a partner in the kitchen! He's slowly learning where to find things like salt and pepper, it will only get easier.
We had a beautiful recital. I was ready to just cancel the whole thing about a month ago, I just couldn't face another recital the same as the last 15. BUT, I realized we had a good solid line up of old standards....we broke the recital into sections by musical era. I introduced the eras, threw a few of my own pieces in to demonstrate a few key era-specific quirks, and we had a blast. I played Bach's Invention No. 8 to show dual-voicing in the Baroque era, Schumann's Knecht Ruprecht to demonstrate the story-telling of the Romantic era, Aaron Copland's The Cat and the Mouse to demonstrate how the sound became the story in the modern era, and finally John Cage's 4'33 to show how the definition of music started to change. All those pieces formed an effective bridge from Star Spangled Banner to the Beatles.
It was all very well received, and it gave a good frame work for the kids' pieces. I played a LOT of duets tonight too, so even a piece as simple as repeated middle c's sounded lush. The parents and grandparents enjoyed the new format, and the kids didn't seem nervous at all. All very good stuff. Everyone went outside for cookies and playing, and it was a great recital.
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