Merry Christmas Music

 Merry Christmas Music from my studio!

ILMEA 2020-Style

ILMEA, like everything else this year, is different for 2020.  District festivals were all canceled months ago, so ILMEA decided to have students submit audition videos. Sylvia auditioned for both orchestra and vocal jazz and made it into both.  Instead of district festivals, today they hosted online masterclasses for the students.  Sylvia chose to attend one workshop for each ensemble she auditioned into, so her first one was cello.

Her second masterclass was with Kim Nazarian of New York Voices. She was awesome, and Sylvia loved every second of this workshop! Kim talked about how she got into vocal jazz and made it her career, as well as how she and other friends have made having a family a priority while also maintaining a career as a performer.  

As Kim was teaching the students over Zoom, she could see their names on the screen as she was watching what she was having them do.  She was calling out students who didn't look like they were participating, and 4 different times she encouraged Sylvia and told her she was doing great!   (Annah, Caeden, and I were all listening in off-screen.) It was pretty darn cool, really.

Caeden's 16th birthday!

 

Caeden was pretty happy with his gifts: LED lights with music effects and a remote, foam acoustic panels, and professional studio monitors. The "real" gift is that we are letting him take all of his music equipment up to his closet to make a small recording studio there.

A new friend in our home and my music studio

A new friend arrived at Music In Your Heart yesterday, and I want to kind of make introductions before students arrive for lessons today. First, I would like to tell a little story about pianos.

The piano I've had in my home for the last 21 years, an upright Kimball, was a graduation gift from my parents when I received my music degree. It had been their friends' and hadn't had much playing since it was bought new in the '90's. It lived in my apartment in Columbus, Ohio for a short time, our first house in Columbus for an even shorter time, and came with us when we moved here to Arrowsmith in 2001. 

Pianos require a consistent temperature and humidity level to be maintained. Our old (125+ years) house has not had central air conditioning for the 19 years we've lived here--until last month! (I could talk about how how life-changing central air is, but that's another story!) My point is, Kimball has been through some life over the past 19 years because we couldn't regulate the humidity level and temperature in the house consistently. I stopped having it maintained and tuned several years ago because my piano tuner became so frustrated that his work would be undone so quickly. My students can probably tell about sticky keys in the summer (That low B that won't even play!) and clicky keys in the winter (We just call it "extra percussion!").  When I had toddlers, one of them left a sippy cup of water on the keys for who-knows-how-long before I found it, and my piano tuner had to heat up the wood of the key over my stove and sand it down with sandpaper to get it to work right again. Yes, Kimball has been used and "loved" a lot over the years. 

My kids have grown up playing it... 

My students have spent a lot of time playing it...

And, I'm so, so, so happy that 5 students returned to lessons in the last couple weeks to play it!

Now, as much as I've loved Kimball and have been SO thankful for all the music made on it, I have always wanted to have a baby grand in my home.  I grew up playing on a baby grand in my parents home from the time I started piano lessons at age 5, and there's just something special about it. 

But, because we didn't have central air, we didn't want to put the money into buying a baby grand we couldn't maintain. So it has just been a dream...until yesterday!

A little over a week ago, my friend Tracie texted me pictures of a little baby grand piano and asked if I might be interested in having it for free!?!

Now, I am always hesitant to consider taking a piano that someone wants to give me for free. They are such sensitive instruments, and you always need to know as much as possible about a piano's history and condition before agreeing to take it and assume care of it. 

Upon asking some questions, I learned that this piano was been in a beautiful old mansion that is about to be demolished after sitting empty for at least a year or two. I watched many videos and read up on how to inspect a used piano.  And two of my kids and I went to inspect the piano ourselves.  

We were amazed at the condition the piano was in, 

and felt confident we needed to rescue it to come live at our house!

So just yesterday, the moving company we hired met us at the house in Decatur and carefully packed up  and transported our new friend Fischer!

I followed them and watched them bring it into our house!

And now it is at home at our house!

Fischer will need to rest for a few weeks before I will have it tuned and regulated, so it is a bit quirky right now with some keys having a little more ring...but actually less so than my Kimball, really!

My daughter Annah and I have already spent hours carefully cleaning the keys and wiping down the surfaces on Fischer.  And for now students may choose if they want to play on Fischer or Kimball.  I will disinfect both between lessons so that students have a choice which they sit at, and I will stay at whichever one they don't choose and we will still have social distancing.  

I'm happy that my students and I will get to enjoy this new-to-me piano together!

It's been a good week.

Sylvia got to participate in an awesome virtual drum major camp through Phantom Regiment Drum Corps. The entire DCI season has been canceled for the year, so they are running several online camps. Regardless of whether or not there ends up being a marching band season, this camp was an excellent  learning experience and wonderful opportunity for Sylvia.

Some of her conducting notes

Working on her conducting in her mirror

On Wednesday night, Sylvia and Caeden went to a special youth group talk about race reconciliation.  They both said it was really good, and they stopped to get McD's on their way home.

Gram hosted a tea party with fresh fruits, zucchini breads, and Bengal spice tea on her porch!

Caeden spends a lot of his time at his music production station these days. It is very therapeutic for him, and we really enjoy getting to hear the music he creates!

Sylvia had her dearest girlfriends over this evening. Jeremy made a fire in our backyard fire pit, and they all brought snacks and just had a wonderful time together. They talked about their fears and frustrations during this time of Coronavirus and prayed over each other. 

There are blessings in the midst of our struggles in life, all because of the grace of God and the hope of Jesus. Thank you, Lord.

It's been beautiful this first "official" week of summer.  

We are learning to enjoy central air--not too hard to do!

Caeden in his music producing spot

He is really liking the midi controller he got at Sweetwater last week!

Friday afternoon, Jeremy took Sylvia to Indiana.  He spent most of Saturday helping around his' parents' place. I tried to clean up and organize our back porch and also worked on staining and sealing the new wood pieces Shannon put in the entry way. It is looking so cool!

Erin took the girls shopping in Fort Wayne. Sylvia tried on formals that were on clearance at Von Maur just for fun and ended up finding and buying her senior prom dress for a really great price! They had so much fun, too!

Tonight Caeden and I watched Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure.  He loved it.

Sweetwater

Caeden has been wanting to visit Sweetwater all summer, and today we went. Annah and Ryan heard Caeden play this tongue drum and came to get me because it was so cool. Now he has something new on his wishlist.

It does sound pretty awesome!

I loved getting to pick out new music and play a beautiful Yamaha baby grand while we were there.

Caeden loved getting to use all this equipment and the full version of Ableton.

He did this song in probably like half an hour, but unfortunately a sales guy was explaining something to a customer very loudly while Caeden was playing it for us...You can still kind of hear his song.

It was tough to get him to leave, but Jeremy got him a MIDI controller/keyboard and he was pretty pumped about that!