Band Concert--A First!

This evening Brandt has his very first ever band concert.  As part of sixth grade, each student must participate in music, either band, orchestra, or choir.  Brandt chose band.  Kent has a saxophone and we sort of hoped Brandt could play that, but they don't do sax in sixth grade (they start in seventh), so Brandt as assigned to play the trombone, or sackbut as we like to call it at our house.  He seemed excited, and Kent found a great trombone to buy through the classified ads.  For the first week after we got it, Brandt carried it around all sorts of strange places--to the church for pack meeting, outside to play, to Grandma Sue's house--and blarted for one and all who cared to listen.  The blarted around the house, and came home excited when band finally started.

They have been working on learning to play, and a couple of weeks ago, Brandt got out his instrument and showed me different slide positions, talked about how he should hold his mouth and blow, and what to do with his tongue.  He knew stuff, and he was putting his knowledge into action. 

So tonight was the first big concert.  Brandt said he was sort of nervous, but he didn't say anything until after the fact, so it wasn't super bad.  He was excited to go and hustled me out of the house to make sure he wasn't late for early set up and tuning.  It was a combined band and orchestra concert.  All the band members were on the stage, and from our seats in the gym, we couldn't see him at all.  The program alternated band and orchestra pieces, with the band performing four: Lightly Row, a Mozart Melody (Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star), London Bridge, and Jingle Bells.  We could hear the trombones really well, and while it might not have actually been Brandt we heard, we can say it was because we could hear them blarting away. 

Mercifully, the concert was very short.  I think the program was essentially finished by 6:45 (it started at 6:30), and that included clapping, pictures, and encores.  I have to give tremendous credit to the band and orchestra teachers because the sound the kids made wasn't stellar.  But they were enthusiastic and seemed to be having a good time, and that counts for a lot when learning to play an instrument.  I applaud their patience.

I got video which I won't post, but here are cute pictures or our cute boy blowing his horn.

You can just see the top of Brandt's head.

He popped up so we knew where he was, but I was far away and didn't get him in focus.

 

At the end, parents were able to go right up to the stage and take close-ups of the kids as they played their final piece a second time.  

Brandt didn't seem to let the attention distract him from his playing. 

The trumpet section.

All four of them.

Brandt likes band enough that when presented with the opportunity to do a bit more with extra individual practices at Centennial Middle School through Honor Elementary Band, he jumped on it and said, "I want to do this.  Sign me up now!"  Hooray for music!