Mission Complete!

Yes, Mission Resurrect-the-Clarinet-after-20-Plus-Years-in-Storage-in-Just-Two-Weeks is complete!  Remember this post? Two weeks ago, a lady from our local community orchestra called me to see if I could fill in for the 1st chair clarinetist who is in the hospital.  Oh, and there is one other thing:  there was only two weeks until the next concert!  Well, I decided to try my best, but needless to say, I was a little nervous about the whole thing since I had not touched my clarinet for more than 20 years!

The first rehearsal I went to was really humbling!  The rest of the orchestra was basically ready for a concert–they already knew the music and were just doing run-throughs.  Ugh!  I had no idea where we were half of the time!  To make matters more interesting, I was the only clarinetist at that rehearsal.  I had a lot of fun that night, but I was still not sure that I’d be ready to play in a concert!

The next rehearsal went better because (shh, don’t tell!) I cheated a little bit!  I found most of the songs we were performing on  You Tube, and I practiced at home by playing along with those videos.  I felt a little silly, but this proved to be quite helpful, and at least I had an idea of how my part was supposed to go at that second rehearsal!

That brought me to yesterday, the day of the concert.  I was still a little worried–especially after I found out that we were going to have a 1 1/2 hour rehearsal before the concert.  I prayed and prayed that God would help me get through the 4 hours straight of playing between the practice and the performance, and He did!  The concert went very well, and I can honestly say that I had a lot of fun.

The kids enjoyed the concert too–especially Cosette.  She has wanted to play the cello for a long time, but had never actually seen a real one until yesterday.  Now she REALLY wants to play the cello!  😉  The orchestra members asked me if I would become a permanent member, but I told them that right now it just doesn’t work in our schedule.  The boys have scouts on the same nights that the orchestra rehearses, and it just gets pretty complicated trying to get them where they need to go and still take care of the younger three kids too.  I really do want John to start playing in the orchestra, so maybe over the next few months we can work something out with the Scoutmaster so we can both start at the beginning of the fall season.  If that works out, I’d switch over to violin so I could help John.  Then it wouldn’t be too long before Brock and Cosette could join too!  Wouldn’t that be fun?!  We’ll see if the doors open!

(By the way, I’ll admit that that the picture of the concert looks a little odd because of the casual dress.  It was a jeans/t-shirt concert.  The first half of the concert was all Mozart songs, and the second half was mostly movie music, so it was pretty informal! )