Music Festival

Yesterday was the big day. I played my violin at the Haliburton Music Festival. Thanks goodness that the adjudacator wasn't like Simon Cowell!

There were several of us playing and they had us play from youngest to eldest. First, a six year old boy named Eric, was sooo cute. At the start of every line, he went up on his toes. Then Mieke, 10, who was pretty much terrified and refused to crack a smile no matter what I said to her, but she did well. Matthew who is about 13 played two really tough, advanced classical pieces, then Emily, 15, played two fiddle tunes she was great ... "gnarly", as Leo put it when she was done. Leo, about 16, played a classical piece on a big ol' double base. He was great. Then me.

I played two pieces. First, St Anne's Reel, a Canadian fiddle tune, with Ken as my accompanist on guitar. It went really well, no mistakes despite my nerves. I would have like to have had more "pulse" in it, but it was good. The adjudicator, Stella, gave me great comments on it.

The second piece was a classical one, Bourée in G Major by Handel. I made a couple of mistakes, but was able to recover so it was hardly noticable, then I made a third one that I actually had to pause for a moment and get my fingers out of the braided mess they were in. However, I got good compliments on that too.

One thing I had been working on all week was keeping from scrunching up my face when I made a mistake, so only those who knew the music would catch the small goofs. I think I did fairly well on that .. well mostly. Apparently when I briefly paused to sort my fingers out I mouthed the word "shoot". The only ones who caught it were Stella and my teacher, Bethany, who was accompanying me on the cello. Afterwards, when the doors were opened and people were leaving, Stella came up to me laughing and asked "Did I hear you use a "colourful" word when you made that mistake?". Smiling, Bethany said, "It was 'shoot'.". Fortunately, I'm fairly sure it was shoot, but I told her, laughing "It wouldn't have been unlike me".

All in all, I had fun, played pretty well and got great comments from the adjudicator.

Yesssss!