A proud Mummy moment

Current work: fic and nonfic
Listening to: John Renbourne
Reading: various research stuff

Last night was the CASMA (Central Area Schools Music Association) spring concert. Daughter has been practising her songs for weeks and weeks and weeks.

And it was fabulous.

It was held at St Andrew’s and Blackfriars’ Hall in Norwich:

The cloisters and undercrofts are usually open (the cafe and antiques fairs), but I haven’t been in the hall itself for ages – last time was probably when I took my last set of professional exams, back in 1992. And the last time I was involved in the kind of thing my daughter was doing would be... ooh, about 1974/5 (recorder group). Scary how quickly time passes.

Anyway, this is inside the hall, with 200-odd kids from seven of the local junior schools in the choir (the blue things are raindrops used during ‘Singing in the Rain’).

They sang a huge range of music, from traditional (such as ‘Land of the Silver Birch’) through to jazz-blues (Blue Brother Jake – fantastic as they did it in four parts), through to musicals (and the lyrics of ‘We Go Together’ from Grease aren’t exactly easy). We were also treated to performances from the county’s Youth Orchestra, and they were fabulous. The double bass trio was particularly interesting, because you don’t often hear the double bass getting a solo. (I also didn’t realise quite how BIG the instruments are.) They played variations on an air (aka ‘Au clair de la lune, mon ami Pierrot’) and it was beautiful. The wind quintet were superb, too. And the brass soloists.

I think the music teachers should be very proud of themselves because their hard work paid off. And the kids, too, should be proud: playing in front of a crowd of around 750 people is pretty scary. Well done to all of them.

This morning, I don’t actually care that I’m behind with work. Because I wouldn’t have missed last night for the world.