GMS Outreach Concert

On Wednesday March 2, I was asked to play and speak in a music outreach concert.  An outreach concert is where we go to title 1 schools and give music concerts to introduce them to music.  Title 1 schools are schools that have a lot of mixed ethnicity and not very much money.            

My very first sleepover was the night before this outreach concert.  I went to Brigham City with my friends McCall and Mackie.  It wasn't a real sleepover though.  We had to plan what we were going to say and how to introduce the Gifted Music School and the pieces we would play.  We were so nervous and didn't really know what to say about our pieces.  It took us over an hour to get it all done.  Once we were done though, we went right to bed instead of staying up and talking all night.  

Mountain View Elementary School

 The first school we went to was Mountain View Elementary School.  We played at the middle school building, which had a really big auditorium with nice seats.  It also had a nice stage that we set up on.  The piano wasn't the best, but it definitely wasn't the worst piano I have ever played.  It was a baby grand piano.

I got put in charge of talking about our quartet.  I told the kids about our name, the Kuruma Quartet, and why we are called that.  Kuruma means car in Japanese and since we drive so much we are always in the car to get to rehearsals.  Kuruma Quartet sounds cooler than Car Quartet.  I also told the kids that we first formed as a group three years ago and that none of us really wanted to do it, but our parents made us.  We then came to love working with each other and became great friends.

The first performance, I totally forgot about half of my speech.  I forgot to say our group name and give an example of the main theme.  I told the kids to count how many times the main theme came back and that I would ask them afterwards.  Of course I forgot to ask them after.  I was totally scattered throughout the whole first performance.

The second performance went a lot better.  I found I could talk a little more confidently and remember what i was supposed to say.  The audience was really good with participation and actually did try counting the number of times the theme came back in our quartet piece.  Some of the kids were really close with their counting and I was surprised.  

The second school we went to was Woodstock Elementary School.  Their multipurpose room was a lot smaller.  The stage barely fit all of the orchestra members.

The piano didn't fit on the stage, so I had to sit down on the side.  It was awkward when I wasn't playing.  The piano was an upright that I am positive hadn't been used in ten years.  It was so out of tune and bad.  It was also covered in lots of dust.  As I was playing, my fingers got really dusty and dirty.  It was kind of grossing me out.  The pedal on the piano was also way to high up.  I could barely do it because I have really small feet that didn't quite allow my heel to be on the ground if I wanted to use the pedal.

I would say that my talking turned out better than my playing that Woodstock elementary.  It was fun to skip school to give concerts though.  I also loved having a sleepover with my best friends.