Skip to main content

The Kennedy White Whale: PMEA All-State ORCHESTRA

Yep, another PMEA year has come and gone.  And this year, we had a new winner.  Glo, after hours and hours, and have I mentioned HOURS of practicing, advanced to All-State festival for orchestra, a feat that had not been accomplished by her siblings.

She also made it to Regional Chorus, but since she had already auditioned for, and advanced to All-State on violin, she didn't put much time into practicing her chorus music.  In all honesty, who can blame her? :-)



It wasn't perfectly easy though.  When Glo auditioned at Districts (the first level) on first violin, she was seated eleventh chair, which meant she didn't automatically move forward to Regionals.  She had to reaudition (along with seven other kids) for three spots in second violin.  I had never been so thankful that she and I had worked on that erudition piece, despite the fact that we didn't think she would need it.  It was an excerpt from an unheard piece, and in the end, we could only find a recording of it on YouTube by some South American teenager.  Thankfully, she moved on.

There's nothing like fear and disappointment to motivate a musician, so for Regionals, Glo gave everything to practicing.  Two hours a day of just PMEA music.  After her audition, she texted us all and told us that she didn't think she did very well (she'd actually needed to restart one of the excerpts).  Oh my goodness, I was praying so hard for her to just get a seat.  Even last seat.

The next day, she texted us with the news:  she had gotten FIRST CHAIR!  Obviously, Glo isn't very good at evaluating her own performances! :-)

And at All-State, she got seated better than almost every State High musician, and she out sat all but one of the violinists that she beat at Regionals.  It's kind of like running your second marathon:  it proves that your first victory wasn't a fluke.

We are so proud of her!

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The Quest for Birkenstocks

One of the main reasons I go to Germany every couple of years is to restock my supply of Birkenstocks.  I started buying them when I lived there, and I basically can't live without them now.  It just about kills me when a pair runs its course and needs to be thrown away.  I think in my lifetime, I've thrown away only three pairs.  One that never was quite right (the straps were plastic and would cut into my skin after a long day), one pair that I wore gardening one too many times (the brown dirt stains wouldn't come out of the white leather), and the pair that I was wearing when I broke my ankle (they were an unfortunate casualty of broken ankle PTSD because those purple and blue paisleys go down as one of my favorite pairs of all time).  I only threw out the garden ones a couple of days before I left for Germany, because I knew I would be getting a new pair. The only store where I have ever bought my Birkenstocks is Hoffmann's in Speicher.  (Well okay, t...

Like Dominos....

It all began with glare.  Simple, obnoxious, I-can't-stand-it-anymore glare. Our 60" rear projection TV in the family room was basically unviewable except after 10 o'clock at night.  The glare from the windows was making it impossible to see anything during my 10 minute lunch break each day, and something had to change. Too, the TV didn't fit in the entertainment center from Germany.  John, wanting bigger and better, hadn't considered that the space is only 40" wide.  For the past five years, I have been nagged by 6" of overhang on both sides of the TV stand. I went to Lowe's to price blinds.  $1,043 for five blinds, and that was at 20% off. I figured a new TV would be cheaper than that.  I was right, even with the state-of-the-art receiver and new HDMI cables that sly salesman told us we needed to have. But where to put the old TV?  It just needed a quiet, dark place to retire. Glo's bedroom.  Her TV was a relic from the paleoneoneand...

Saying goodbye to KitTen

Last week, we said goodbye to KitTen.  Sadly, it was way too early for him to die. When I worked at Interlochen during the summers, I knew a medical assistant who fostered animals before they were put up for adoption by the local humane society.  She got a Siamese-looking kitten after I had already left camp and posted a photo of him on FB.  I reached out immediately. Growing up with Siamese cats, I really do love them.  I love their personalities, especially how vocal they are.  I adopted KitKat back when we lived in Dayton, but in a strange turn of events, a girl who was cat-sitting him before we left for Germany wouldn't give him back.  Since then, we've had mostly tabbies (with the GRAND exception of Hootie), so I was excited to start an adventure with another Siamese. We were living in PA at the time, so Mark and Allison brought him out to us.  Because he was going to be MY cat, I was determined to give him THE most perfect name, but in the end, w...