Bowing and Plucking and Keeping the Beat (Truly Grateful Series)

My son plays the upright bass (sometimes called a double bass) in his junior high school orchestra. This month he was chosen to perform as a member of the Ohio Music Education Association, District 1 Junior High School Honors Orchestra in a concert this past Sunday, March 1, 2009 at the Stranahan Theater in Toledo, Ohio. Participants in this orchestra were selected through a recorded audition process from students from six counties in Northwest Ohio.

We traveled to hear him play in the concert, of course, and loved the music. I thought I'd share some pictures with you of our trip and the concert. There are quite a few here, but you can probably scroll through them pretty fast. Many of these were taken through the car windows and the car was moving at the time, so I apologize for the poor quality of some of the images.

The bass in its case was in the back section of the van with the front end of it extended over the middle seat. This forced my younger son and his girlfriend to sit pretty close together on one side of the seat. They didn't seem to mind.


My older son home from college on break with the bass in his face but waving and smiling and being a good sport about it all.

Here's a little better shot of my older son. He's listening to music on his i-pod and relaxing.

My husband is in the driver's seat.


I'm riding shotgun in the front seat, taking pictures of clouds and vacant corn fields and driving everyone nuts with the camera. We took the Ohio turnpike to Toledo. Northwest Ohio is a lot of flat farmland with not a lot to see, but I took lots of pictures so you could "ride" along with us.

I liked the way this rear view mirror shot turned out.


Not much traffic on the turnpike.



The sun was shining, the sky was blue, and there were lots of pretty clouds in the sky on Sunday. Our snow had almost all melted except for just a few spots here and there, but it was still a very cold and windy day.












We drove by a pond that had a few ducks swimming on it (which you probably can't see unless you click on the second picture here to increase the size of the image).




As we got off the turnpike, we had to stop to pay the toll, of course.

This is the auditorium and theater where the concert is going to be held.



We drop my son off at the stage door entrance. They are having a rehearsal before the concert.

We drive off to get a bite to eat and kill some time before the concert starts.
I took a couple more shots of the outside of the theater on our way out.


We stopped and got gas for the van, and my older son was amused by this car air freshener machine there so he took a picture of it. There is a cherry bomb air freshener machine with a red and yellow sign on it on the post in the back too.

We decided to visit an antiques market while we waited for it to be time for the concert to start. I took several photos at the market which I will share with you in another post, but here are a few as a teaser.

We saw this display of hats at the market, and my older son and I couldn't resist clowning around a bit with them.






After visiting the antiques market, we drove back to the theater for the concert.



Picture taking wasn't allowed during the performance, but I took a couple of fuzzy, bad shots when they were done playing. My son is up on stage in the right front corner, but you really can't tell who is who from these shots.



After the concert, there were a lot of folks milling about in the lobby waiting for the students. We joined the crowd.

I thought these chandeliers in the lobby were beautiful, so I took some pictures of them while we waited.



We finally found my son in the crowd, and I asked him to smile for me while I took his picture, since I couldn't take a good photo of him during the concert.

My son then told me that the director of this honors youth orchestra he had just performed with is also the director of the Toledo Youth Symphony. The director gave my son his business card and wants him to get in touch with him if he is interested in knowing more about the Toledo Youth Symphony. I asked my son if the director gave his card to all the students in the orchestra. My son grinned big and said, "No, just a few of us."


We loaded back into the van and headed for home. More sights of clouds and empty corn fields and nothing to see for as far as you can see on the trip back.











Lord, for music to be appreciated and enjoyed, for family time, for clouds and corn fields, for peaceful drives in the country, and for honors and opportunities, let me be truly grateful.