Fiddlin' About

Greetings, America.

Covid-19 has thrown a wet blanket on literally everything over the course of the last fourteen months, and while conditions across the country continue to improve (no more wearing masks in public if you're fully vaccinated - finally), we're not out of the maelstrom just yet.  

Schools remain pretty well-regulated affairs, with more stringent protocols in place than elsewhere in society.  Case in point, the girls' annual Spring Orchestra Concerts - for Chestnut Hill and Northeast - were both modified to avoid large crowds gathering indoors.  Each school had a different way of putting on a concert for families while still acknowledging existing Covid-19 restrictions.  Chestnut Hill, for example, pre-recorded their orchestra concert in their practice room, then posted it online for parents to check out and view at their leisure.

Since it's a 13-minute video, showing the elementary school students perform in their entirety, the file was too large for me to post here on this blog (thanks, Blogger.)  However, you can click here if you'd like to view it (Abby is the cellist sitting at the far right, in the front row, wearing the burgundy dress and plaid face mask.)

7th Grade Orchestra, setting up shop outside Midland High.

Northeast opted to invite families to their concert and perform it live, but, in doing so, were forced to hold the concert outdoors behind Midland High School.  The beauty with this setup was that, in order to keep crowd sizes as low as possible, we no longer had to sit through other grade-level ensembles and their orchestra concerts.  I'm not sure if you remember that or not, but the last time Alayna had an orchestra concert, we listened to her perform for 15 minutes, then had to sit through the 7th and 8th grade orchestras from Northeast, as well as the 6th, 7th, and 8th grade orchestras from Jefferson Middle.  It was horrifying.

As you can imagine, I made sure we got there just as the 6th Grade Orchestra was wrapping up, in order to nab optimal seats for picture-taking.  I would've sat myself a little to the right, in order to get more of the her face instead of a side-profile, but the teacher set a frickin' mic stand in my way so I made due with the hand I was dealt.  You're welcome.

So here you go, folks - Alayna's 7th Grade Orchestra Concert:

Gotta love scales. . .

In the zone.

(Went back and forth between my 24-105 and 300 zoom lenses, in case you were curious.)

'Sword Dance'

Yes, my kid wore leopard print to this thing.

'The Grotto'

'The Charming Snake'

'Fiddles on Fire' 

Taking a bow at the end of the performance.

Alayna and her orchestra teacher, Miss Mamassian (her favorite teacher - by far - this year.)

- Brian