herbiehancock

You may remember that a while back my fifteen-year-old son was hoping to form a string quintet along with his girlfriend and some of their friends. That quintet has been formed, and they have been practicing the last few weeks. This morning, they had their debut performance when they played two pieces for our church service. My son is the one standing and playing the upright bass, and his girlfriend (although not much of her is visible) is playing the viola and is sitting to the left of him. I think they did a great job, and I am quite proud of them. The first song they performed was "Shepherd's Dance" by Schubert. The second song they played was "You Raise Me Up." The music for this piece was written by Rolf Lovland and the lyrics were written by Brendan Graham.

I meant to post these photos on Sunday, but I was having some computer issues then, so I'm doing it now. First are a couple of photos from Friday night. Our town was having the annual street carnival known as the Jubilee. For a week our downtown square is transformed to a festival. We walked around to see it, but it looked pretty much as it does every year. Lots of rides, noise, music, bright lights, fattening foods, and fun. And some sparkly things too! I'm not sure what these are---something that was for sale there. They looked like they might be some sort of headgear for a little girl to don so she can dream of being a princess. The sparkly colors caught my eye, so I took a picture. If you'd like to see the photos I took of last year's Jubilee, please click here . * * * * On Saturday, we traveled to Bowling Green State University to attend the string camp concerts that my son was performing in and to bring him home from camp. It was rather dark in the a...

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 ...