Orchestra April 2010 Barnes Noble

We were nervous ... preparing and playing a well known and highly technical piece (the Bach Double - or Concerto in D-Minor for 2 violins).

It took a lot of planning, and constant reoganization, as many of the most proficient players have a variety of interests that compete directly with scheduling everyone to be able to practice or perform all together.  Fortunately, we had prepared knowing that there could be a series of last minute changes.  There were three violinists trained on the first violin part, and two violinists on the second.  So were were able to put plan 17.4 in place and voila - we were ready to play.

Lainey was delayed, so today the solos were played with Eric on entire 1st violin solo, with Casey taking  the small middle section 1st part, and the most difficult 2nd violin, last part.  Mai  handled the 2nd violin part for the intro (over half of the piece) and picked up the very end part as well.  Everything went off without a hitch.  Plust it was really nice having Amber on viola at a performance again!  Lainey arrived just in time to play her 2nd violin solo in the James Bond theme.

And with Jessica gone, Jill took the intro to Singing in the Rain.  Pink Panther was a lot more fun with Karlie on Piano and Kristen on Bass.  Brianna had her first Sande Strings solo playing the violin solo in "Godfather," while Dad, Aunt & Uncle looked on.

It was really nice having Amber on viola and Joel on Cello.  As the primary players of these instruments in the group naturally, they get featured quite a bit.  This will be the last series of concerts with Joel in them, as he will be joining the Air Force after graduation.  We'll miss him.  For the performance, we added Eric on cello, and played Pirates.  We were even able to convince Callie to step out of the audience and join us, on Eric's violin.

One of the highlights included both Lainey and Eric being asked to play the Tradition solos at the beginning of Fiddler, without preparation.  Natrually they did an outstanding job.

Despite all the last minute changes, EVERYTHING went very well.  So well, that we've been asked to reprise our concert again.

Lainey was the first to confirm that she was very interested in doing a second concert, and Eric can always be counted on to express our delight.  We'll be back next Friday again.  5/7 @ 4:15!  Hope to see you there!