May was a very busy month for us, with stuff happening every day and every night, or so it seemed. Many of these activities (though not all of them) were school-related. With everything winding down for the year, the school days themselves may have been a bit dull (standardized testing was over, and now there was nothing for the kids to do!!), but there was a lot of extracurricular stuff that kept us hopping.
Several of these school's-end events involved music. Besides my own piano recital earlier in the month, there was a musical assembly at our charter school, performed by all the elementary-grad classes and directed by the school's music teacher. I have been a bit on the fence with my regard for the school's music teacher this year; sometimes, I have worried her musical qualifications were a bit lacking. Often, the kids would come home after music class and talk about "play-acting" or "dancing to Top 40 hits"...and nothing else. I worried that the kids weren't getting any education in music fundamentals, and as a music teacher that bothered me a bit. I had no personal issue with the teacher; however, there were times I wished the school would have just called her class a "dance/movement" class, not a music class!
My concerns were somewhat mollified, though, with the spring assembly. While the focus was still more on dancing, the overall theme of the assembly was more organized and ambitious than the school's other previous efforts, and each class acquitted themselves well in their performance! The theme was "musical styles from around the world," and each class performed a piece from a different musical genre. There was African choral music, big-band swing, country music, R&B, Latin pop, and more. It was fun to see how each performance differed from the others, and it all made for a nicely varied experience!
Celeste's class was assigned to perform "country music," and they really threw themselves into their square-dancing efforts!
Celeste is in the front on the left, in the salmon-colored shirt.
Lorelai's class had a slightly more exotic assignment: they performed an Indian-style dance (my apologies for forgetting the name of this style...possibly bhangra?). It was very similar to the Bollywood dance numbers that often occur at the end of so many Indian films. It involved a lot of large hand & arm gestures and some cool hip and foot movements. I didn't get a video of the actual dance, but I managed to snap some photos of some of the best bits:
I really love Indian music (although I'll freely confess that I don't know much about the genre), so this was a fun number for me to watch. The kids seemed to have a fun time performing it!
All in all, it was a good assembly, and parents and students alike went home satisfied. But that wasn't the last musical event the school had to offer this school year. The following week, our family convened in a nearby church to hear the Great Expectations Academy's two jazz bands perform.
Lorelai has been playing trombone in beginning band all year, and she has liked it most of the time. For a while in the middle of the year, half of her rehearsals were cancelled due to a variety of factors (many of which involved scheduling conflicts with the advanced band's travel plans). However, towards the end of the year, Lorelai started getting really excited about band again. She loved the songs that were picked, and she had a lot of fun performing.
For a few of the songs, advanced band was able to play with beginning band (probably to boost the sound somewhat; neither band is especially big!). I was very proud when Mr. Mark, the director, recognized each band member. Lorelai is always so shy when she's being introduced, but she doesn't let it keep her from performing well!
This was Lorelai's favorite song that beginning band performed this year (it's the main theme from "Peter Gunn," an older TV show):
And here's our little virtuoso celebrating after the show!
We will definitely do band for at least one more year, then we'll see how Lorelai is feeling about it. I would love for her to have the multi-instrument experience that I never fully had growing up; but if she wants to throw her lot in with one instrument over another, I will do my best to be supportive of that. Time will tell! In the meantime, let's see if I can get her to practice her trombone a bit over the summer...
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