How Do You Get To Orchestra Hall? Practice. Practice Practice.

I think that old saw is only true for Carnegie Hall. Last night the Madster made her debut at Orchestra Hall without much practice at all. For the past few weeks she's been participating in Viva City, a program in the Minneapolis Public Schools. Last night it was Viva City's dance and choral music night, held at the best music venue in the state. Madster was invited along with 5 or 6 other Emerson middle schoolers to sing in a choir. The choirs are directed by an "artist in residence" who the district hires to work with kids in different schools. Madster's choir director was a visiting scholar at Macalester College in St. Paul, originally from Ghana. He arranged three songs for the kids to sing, and I thought they were the best performers of the whole night. The songs had lovely African sounding melodies, the kids stayed together and to my ear at least, they were in tune. By way of comparison, the high school choir, directed by a professor from Luther College, sang more traditional choral arrangements. They sounded fine, but for the most part choral music just doesn't do it for me. All in all it was a nice evening that included the requsite cuteness of 2nd graders doing a kind of swing dance. The only downside was when the emcee, during a lengthy shuffling of choir members on and off the stage, broke into George Benson/Whitney Houston's "Greatest Love of All." Stupid dreck. Of course children are the future, us old people will be dead in the future. Loving your self is the greatest love of all? Well that just gives me the creeps.

Madster and her friend Charlie were complaining on the way to Orchestra Hall (yes, we took the bus) about how they didn't have enough time to rehearse and that they didn't know some of the words to the songs and chants they were singing. Oh well. They sounded great to me. So yes, you can get to Orchestra Hall without enough practice. Madster is fortunate to have TOYH's most excellent musical abilities. Madster has always had a sweet singing voice. If she was relying on my genes, she never would have been invited to participate.

I wasn't able to bike today. I had my hopes up. Last night when we were coming home from the concert, the streets were clear and the snow had pretty much let up. I watched the weather news and stupid Belinda said that any snow falling overnight would melt and the roads would be clear. Wrong. We ended up with about 3 inches of heavy, wet snow on the ground. On the roads they plowed overnight, the city pushed all the slush into the bike lanes and the unplowed streets were rutted, packed snow and slush. Yuck. The nice thing about this storm is that we should have a Denver type recovery. It should be warm enough that most of the snow should be gone by the end of the week.