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Some of you may remember that my son's string quintet was scheduled to perform at the Christmas Open House at the library where I work.  Last night was the open house, and it went very well.  In the children's department, there were crafts, and cookies and punch, and visits with Santa, of course.  In the adult department there was Christmas music performed by the quintet.  The kids did a wonderful job and were well received.  My son is the one standing in the back to the left playing the upright bass. I recorded a couple of the songs if you'd like to listen.  They are both fairly short.

I will be without my computer for the next two or three days.   The library is going to set up my home computer with remote access to my computer at work.   This will allow me the opportunity to work from home on occasion should I need to or desire to.  As a result, I will need to be offline so that this can be accomplished.  I'll be back before long. In the meantime, I thought I would share with you a couple more songs from when my son played with the City Orchestra at the Ice Arena at the end of July.  I posted about it previously along with another song that they played here if you'd like to know more about it. Eleanor Rigby Blue Fire Fiddler :  I didn't catch the end of this because I ran out of room on my camera card, but there's enough here to listen to.  I really like this one and wish I had gotten all of it recorded.

If you're like me, you learned this song from watching Bugs Bunny make a fruit salad on Elmer Fudd's head.  This is one of the songs the City Orchestra played at this week's concert.  My son is playing the upright bass as you probably already know.  This is the Barber of Seville. Also, my blogging friend, Becky, is having a giveaway over at her blog , and she wanted me to invite you all over there to enter.  You never know, you might be the big winner!  She's giving away an awesome prize which includes a long list of really great items.  Why not click on the link for  her blog  to get all the details and get yourself entered?  Have a great weekend everyone!

I wrote about the City Orchestra that has recently formed in my little town a few days ago and showed pictures of their performance in the atrium at the hospital.   They had their second performance last night.  It was originally scheduled to be held on the courthouse square in the gazebo there, but thunderstorms had been rolling through our area most of the afternoon, so the concert was moved to the ice rink instead so that it would be under cover in case more rain came through.   The City Orchestra was to perform first and then the City Band.   This picture was taken before the concert began.  Some of the musicians are still arriving and those in the audience are trickling in with their lawn chairs to set up in the rink to listen to the performance. They are starting to warm up in this picture.  That's my son with his bass standing there in the center of the picture. They are still getting set up here.  This gives you a better view of the number of ...

There has been a city band in my little town for the past 159 years.  We are kind of big on traditions around here.  Now a new tradition has begun.  Our little town, in addition to having a city band, how has its own city orchestra.  They had their first performance last night inside the atrium at our local hospital.  It was a magnificent concert.  As you probably have guessed, my son playing his upright bass was a part of that orchestra.  His girlfriend and her violin were also a part of it. Some of you who have been reading this blog for a while may remember the pictures I showed you of the outside renovations done to the hospital.  I don't think I've had pictures on here of the inside of the hospital though.  It really is quite nicely done inside.  The atrium is especially beautiful. This picture shows the orchestra performing in the atrium.  We are on the third floor looking down from the open balcony on the inside of the buil...

My son spent last week at Orchestra String Camp.  He had a great time!  We got to hear him play in both a chamber concert and an orchestra concert last weekend before we brought him home.  I didn't take these pictures. They were shared with me by a friend.  This is a group shot of the campers.  My son is in the next to last row, second from the right side.  His girlfriend is next to him on the left. I thought this was a pretty picture of the musicians on the stage.  My son is at the far right side in the back, second from the end, playing an upright bass. I really like this last photo.  My son is in the middle here. He is keeping busy this summer.  He is tutoring three younger orchestra students on the bass.  He has also been asked to play his bass in the orchestra pit of the community theater group's summer production of Oklahoma .  He played with the high school pit orchestra for their performance of South Pacific earlier this ye...

My son brought home his orchestra portrait from school the other day.  I thought it turned out pretty well. I took it with me to the nursing home to show my mom.  She liked it and said she thought he looked sharp in his tuxedo.  Then she laughed and said, "She wasn't used to seeing him in a penguin suit."  She chuckled then at her own joke.  Any day when she can find a reason to smile is a good one in my mind, so I was glad I took the picture in to show her.   The word tuxedo always makes me think of Tennessee Tuxedo and his friend Chumley , cartoon characters from my childhood.  Does anyone else remember them?  I took a little trip down memory lane by watching one of their cartoons on Youtube .  Don Adams (from Get Smart fame) did the voice of Tennessee Tuxedo.  It's interesting that they wear ties and hats but no shirts and pants, don't you think?  HA HA! Anyway, I said last week that I had some videos to post of when my son play...

  My friend, Michelle who writes the blog, Crow's Feet  has given me the Kreativ Blogger award.  This is what I have to say about that.  Thank you, Michelle.  It was very kind of you to think of me.  According to the rules of the award, I am to now write seven things that my readers may find of interest about me.  I'm going to bend that rule a little bit.  You know me.  I'm such a rebel.  I wanted to share seven things that made me smile recently, so hopefully they will be of interest to you as well. 1.  My son's girlfriend was over visiting here on Saturday.  I was in the kitchen fixing dinner when she called me into the living room where she was.  She had a laptop computer open in front of her.   "Look at this," she said.  She motioned toward the computer screen in front of her indicating that I should look at it.  "He's throwing snowballs at me!" The "he" she was referring to me was my son.  H...

This past Sunday I traveled to Toledo, Ohio to the Peristyle Theater of the Toledo Museum of Art to hear my younger son play the upright bass as part of the Toledo Youth Sinfonietta. It was an exciting day. In the photo above is the program booklet which has MY son's name in it. ( Yes, I'm boasting and grinning. Thank you for reading this and kindly indulging a mother's pride. ) This is what the stage looked like before the musicians came out on it. Click on this link: Peristyle Theater , to see a view of the inside of the theater from the rear of the auditorium taken by a photographer who obviously knows what he is doing. It is a spectacular place. The members of the Sinfonietta made sure their instruments were tuned and spent some time warming up before the concert started. My son was second chair upright bass. He is the one standing second from the right with the glasses and red hair in the photos below . The concert is about to start. I made videos of the song...

I hope you all will forgive me for beaming with pride, but I wanted to share with you some of the music I heard this past Sunday. My younger son played his upright bass in the local high school orchestra concert that day, and I was in attendance. His girlfriend, also in the orchestra, played the violin. They were in their formal wear for the performance as you can see. I made videos of three of the four songs they played during the concert. My son is in the back on the right hand side of the stage playing the upright bass. You can see just the top of his head occasionally above one of the music stands. His girlfriend is seated, playing the violin, just to the left of the director in the middle of the stage if you want to watch for her when I turn the camera over in that direction. The quality of these videos, taken with our inexpensive camera by me---the one with NO camera skills, is poor at best. I think I managed, unknowingly, to cut off the beginning of one of these songs a...

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.

We took my younger son, the upright bass player, to Orchestra Strings Camp at Bowling Green State University over the past weekend. He will be there until this Saturday when we return to hear him play the pieces they are learning in the orchestra there. We will first get to hear him play in a chamber performance---in his case, it is going to be a duet with just him and another upright bass player---and then we will get to hear him play in the entire strings group orchestra. He has been looking forward to going to this camp for a while. He went to it last year and really loved it. He seemed to learn a lot from going there and also met others who enjoy music the way he does. In fact, it was at Strings Camp last year that he met his girlfriend. She plays the violin and piano and is planning to also learn the viola. Yes, they have now been dating for a year! Ay-yi-yi! Well, we won't go into that topic for now. It was fun to take him to camp because I found out that the dorm he i...

Well, it's Friday, which, in and of itself, is a great reason to celebrate. What's more, today is my younger son's last day of school. So I am sure you know that he is feeling like celebrating. After today he is officially a freshman in high school. He has had a good week. Yesterday, his class voted, and he was chosen as next year's freshman representative on the student council. The day before that he received a letter from the Toledo Youth Symphony Orchestra . Based on his audition, he has been chosen to be one of their upright bass players in next year's youth symphony orchestra. Here is the mission statement from their website: " As part of the core educational mission of the Toledo Symphony, the Toledo Youth Orchestra brings together 100 of the most talented students from Northwest Ohio and Southeast Michigan in an atmosphere of musical excellence." My son is elated. His mom is pretty happy about this whole matter as well. So with so many r...

My younger son has a solo audition on his upright bass this afternoon to try out for the possibility of a scholarship for summer strings camp. Listening to him practice has left me in the mood to sway. Here's some swaying music from Harry Connick, Jr., who is apparently one of my look alikes . Too bad I can't sing like him too.

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 ...