The Very First Band Concert

YaYa has been playing her oboe for more than a year now, taking lessons each week from a terrific oboist.  Last week was her first actual band concert, however, since most of the sixth graders at their school just got their instruments in November.  I have been waiting and waiting for her YaYa’s first band concert, pretty much since the day I gave birth to her.

You might recall how terrible sounding bands make me tear up with joy.  I knew I was going to be tearing up.  I just get emotional about kids learning to play instruments.  Even though lots of people in the world learn to play instruments, if you’ve ever been the one to actually hand a kid an instrument that they are excited to play, and if you’ve watched how completely foreign it looks and feels in their hands as they begin figuring out how to make sound come out of it, you will have realized that learning to play an instrument (even learning to play it poorly)  is truly a miraculous thing.

The day of the band concert was jam packed with craziness.  It was the first day of my winter preschool music class.  It was a teaching day.  Dr. Peds was working.  I was juggling students and homework checking for my middle kidlets, and supper (thankfully YaYa helped . . . she makes a mean peanut butter and jelly sandwich and had everyone fed by the time my last student exited.)  Then their was the rounding up of all kidlets and their outerwear so we could get to the middle school in time for YaYa to make it to her warm up and find a parking spot.  It was actually a huge blessing that we arrived early because  we actually got a parking spot in the parking lot and a place to sit.  There were a kajillion people at the concert who had come to hear the sixth, seventh and eighth grade bands.

In all of the hullabaloo, I was so focused on the tasks at hand that I hadn’t even stopped to consider how much my resident preschool band fan might enjoy the concert.  If anything, I had probably spent any spare time considering how I could avoid some kind of audience catastrophe that can result from taking a three year old to a concert.  When I was putting on his shoes and zipping his coat, Mr. Trouble on Feet was literally beaming, sparkling, and glowing with excitement.  “Me SOOOOO excited about Ssssszzzzaaaaah’s concert!” he announced.  Of course he would be excited.  He plays marching band all day long every day.  Why hadn’t I thought of that?

I had brought along a few things in a bag to entertain my little guy while we were waiting for the concert to start, but it turned out I didn’t need them at all because he was so enraptured with watching all the sixth graders take their instruments out of their cases that there was no need to be entertained.  The middle kidlets were busy watching too, and very excited to be readying my iPod touch to take videos of YaYa’s band so that we could show Dr. Peds who was away at a meeting.  They had a lot of fun filming.

The sixth grade band was wonderful in all the ways that beginning band students playing at their first concert should be.  They played all my favorite pieces for a first band concert:  Hot Cross Buns, Mary had a Little Lamb, you know the drill.  There were some squeaks and some sputters peppered in, but overall, they were disciplined and watched the conductor, and I had the feeling that they were trying their best (even though according to my daughter they don’t try their best in class every day).  The brass sounded great.  The percussionists were learning to play the mallet instruments (hooray!) .  I could hear my oboist.  The clarinets were highly entertaining!

During one particular number each section stood up to do a soli part in the song.  First came the flutes and oboe, then the clarinets, then the trumpets, and lastly the trombones and tubas.  When the trombones stood up Mr. TOF (enraptured at this point) let out a gasp and exclaimed “Whoah!” which totally cracked all of us and all the people around us up.  We have it recorded on a video clip, and the big kids play it over and over because it is so cute.

A wonderful thing about having an oboist daughter is that you know she’ll always be sitting front and center in the band.  How photogenic!

On the last number, after the last note, one clarinet eeeked out a perfect little squeak, which was the perfect ending.

I loved watching my piano students who were playing in the seventh and eighth grade bands too.  “Is YaYa going to be as big as those eighth graders in two years, Mom?” The Banana asked when she watched the eighth graders march up to their seats.  Perhaps.  But I think we’ll just enjoy sixth grade for the time being.