December Performances

Well, I got to play with my new violin friend Saturday night: Mr Zin Violin himself, Chris Kranyak. We played a wedding in a tent in Danville. He's awesome! The wind was howling outside in the trees while we played duets for a wedding. There were about a hundred people there. In addition to our regular Bach/Handel wedding music selections, we had to accompany a tenor who said he had woken up with a sore throat and so didn't have any high notes. The piece was a John Denver composition called "For You", which, of course, required high notes. But it was fine. The bride was very nice and also the groom, who stood and talked with us for quite some time during the reception. ( This never happens). He is a scientist that is developing a cutting edge laser and he was explaining it to us. He has been traveling to Germany with a team of international scientists. It all sounds very exotic and exciting. We were waiting for dinner and the butternut squash soup at the reception, but it took too long, so we just left a little hungry. In the meanwhile, though, I discovered these amazing pecans with some kind of sweet and sour coating that were hella great, so at least there was that.

And then on Sunday I played two church performances. On the first one I had a nice cello solo at the very opening of the show. That was fun. And I met a nice bass player named Dave and a violist named Jason who has a doctorate from Eastman. The conductor let me out early to run to my next show, which was a sing-along Messiah in El Cerrito. We did the entire Messiah, which was long. The conducor was dressed up in a big white wig and some great clothes from the baroque period. He was posing as Handel's brother!

We have shows this week at two retirement homes in Alameda. Isabelle, who is still four, I am proud to say, is going to perform selections from her repertoire! We will play some pieces together and then I am going to play some Christmas music with a guitarist friend, Terrence Brewer. It should be fun. You never know, though, what Isabelle will do in performance. Last time, at the preschool performance, I had brought a violin for the children to look at and to try out, and Isabelle decided that she wanted to perform on that. I had to let her play it for awhile before she would play her cello. It's always an adventure with a performing four year old.