Sounds of the Season 2010 - Concert week

December 6-11, 2010
The week of the concerts for Sounds of the Season is always crazy - but even more so when there is a baby involved. The week of the concert we had a 4-hour dress rehearsal on Thursday and then concerts on Friday and Saturday. At first we had talked about having M&M and Luke come to the first concert and then DH would come the second night with Blondie and Kitty, leaving M&M and Luke to babysit MJ and Kay. Well, we ended up not doing that because MJ had been such a pill during the dress rehearsal and the first concert that DH wasn't sure if M&M would be able to handle her alright. M&M expressed an interest in attending the concert again the second night so I brought her with Blondie and Kitty (who also sat with my sister and her family).

This year the oboe player had been asked to play a couple of solo numbers in-between some of the choral numbers, but she didn't feel comfortable doing solos so she asked me if I would be willing to play in a quintet with her and her husband (who plays bassoon). We ended up just making it a trio since we couldn't find a clarinet or french horn player. The oboe player had some choral music that she thought she could arrange for our trio group so I went to her house one evening to run through a couple of numbers. We ended up picking two songs: What Child is This? and We Need a Little Christmas. This was several weeks before the concert so I thought I would be getting the music shortly after that and we would get together at least once or twice to run through everything. Well, I ended up getting my part of the music Wednesday afternoon. The first time we were able to run through it was during the dress rehearsal and we were even making changes to it the night of the first performance. Talk about crazy! Luckily the music was fairly easy and we are all pretty competent players. I think it turned out rather well. I just received a DVD recording of the concert so when DH has a moment I will try and put up a video for those that are interested. We also did a number this year that was just for the orchestra members. That made it a little nicer for those of us involved.