Thomas and I were leaving the FIM Wednesday night after his bassoon duet practice with his intrepid piano accompanist to ready for yesterday's state audition (more about that in a separate post) and a parent came up to me and asked (while looking curiously at Thomas's bassoon case), "Does your son play percussion?" I answered that he did. And then she said that the reason she was asking was that she thought that she "had recognized his hair." It seems that she had spent ages and ages putting together a film piece for the Mott Foundation which highlighted a recent Music Day at the FIM, one that brought together an ungodly number of high schoolers from all over the state. Those kids spent the day in the classrooms at the FIM, learning various aspects of music theory, performance, and such and then, at the end of the day, they put on a massive concert directed by 5 different conductors (one of whom is the conductor from Limonest France, the dramatic conductor we have mentioned before--the guy who two years ago instructed Thomas to "smash!! smash the chimes with feeling!" instructions that caused Rob, Thomas's percussion teacher, to cringe). Here is a link to a news article and a short video. Anytime you see them cut to the percussionists, you can see Thomas in his tux in the back with Omid (of course, the two are like conjoined twins these days, together in three ensembles, performing in concerts every week) with Thomas on snare drum (see 3:27).
The concert at the end of the day really was something else: they could hardly fit all 280 kids onto the stage at The Whiting. Thomas's schedule these past few months has been non-stop performance. He has another concert this upcoming Wednesday, then will have a percussion recital. Soon after that will be a Wind Ensemble concert and then everything will be full-sail rehearsals to gear up for the concert to end all concerts, the Showcase Concert which is the Grand Finale at the end of April.
1 comment:
Wow! Your schedule must be pretty tight too......
xM
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