"Sing, Sing, Sing, Sing"

An important milestone has been reached in Maddie-the-Great's life!!  It probably wouldn't rate all that much attention in most families, but for us???  It's a biggie!

M-t-G participated in her very first Choir Concert!!  Whee!  Hmmm, I know what you're thinking, oh yes, I do.  You're thinking "So what?"  Well, music and singing are a major portion of our lives in this family.  We are, after all, a show-biz family!!  Two employed theater professionals, three who have been singing all our lives (kinda), four who play or have played a musical instrument, one who knows an enormous number of songs....well, actually it's two but the songs we know are from different eras, two who performed off and on for a significant portion of their adulthoods.... and that's just the immediate family!  (Um, just to clarify, there are a total five people in the family, so who does what is kind of mix and match!)

Okay, maybe I'm over-blowing this whole thing just a bit!  (Hyperbole is my greatest fault!!)

The thing is that for a period of about four years, M-t-G REALLY didn't like being in the spotlight (so to speak).  She wouldn't let anyone sing Happy Birthday, because she didn't want people to "look at" her.  She very nearly didn't join the softball team for the same reason.  She wouldn't participate in the recital the first year she was taking violin lessons.  Those kinds of moments scared her and we hoped she'd grow out of it, but it lasted a long time!

The funny part of it was that when it was just one or two of us (family folks), she loved being the center of attention!  She would put on "shows" for us to watch her!  She had the Cowboy show (she can "Yee-Haw! like nobody's business), the Knights show (complete with English accent!) and the Pirate show (Arrggh!  Aye, Matey!)  She would dance, she would sing, she would "play" the harmonica.  She had costumes and props!  One of us would have to introduce her, "Presenting Miss Maddie, doing her interpretation of Cowboy Joe.  Let's hear it for Miss Maddie!"  Then we had to applaud wildly and make the "roar of the crowd" sounds and then she would make her entrance, take a bow, and begin her show!  It was really a hoot!   Clearly, she understood the concept of entertaining, she just didn't want to do anything in front of people she wasn't completely comfortable with, so her audience was limited to her mom and dad, Poppa (sometimes) and me.

It was obvious from these shows that she had a generous portion of "ham" in her personality, but she hid it most of the time!

This year (4th grade) is when the elementary schools around here invite interested kids to join the choir which if made up of 4th and 5th graders.  150 of them, as a matter of fact. 

At first, M-t-G didn't want to do it, even though she loves music and loves to sing!  (She told me she "didn't love it all that much!"  Ha!)   The hang-up was that the kids had to "audition" for the choir and standing up and letting somebody she didn't know hear her sing, was just too scary for her.  Her mom had to work really hard to reassure M-t-G that she wouldn't have to sing alone (2 at a time for try-outs) and all the teacher was listening to was whether she was an alto or a soprano.   Well, she finally agreed to audition.  She told me her mom was "making her" do it!  Double Ha!!

When the day arrived, she did the audition and she survived to tell the tale.  She came home after the first rehearsal all atwitter because she "loved" it!   Triple Ha!!!  She told me after that first rehearsal that they wouldn't have a concert right away but they would have one soon.  She actually sounded excited about it!

So tonight was the first concert.They all wore black skirts or pants with white blouses/shirts and a bright blue bowtie.  The even had a name....the K Keynotes!   They used taped instrumentation to accompany them and they only sang four songs (they've only been singing for about a month!)

But oh my goodness!  They were adorable!  They sounded good, although if the key they were singing in were any higher, there would have been dogs howling all over town!!  I give the music director a lot of credit.  Trying to get 150 kids to memorize 4 songs (one with harmony and motions) and then sing them in front of their parents while behaving themselves as a choir should, that is an accomplishment for any teacher!

And Maddie-the-Great?  She did just fine!  Her movements were "full out", she was animated, she watched the director, she didn't fidget (well, not too much).  And when it was over, she was so excited she was nearly bouncing off walls!!  She LOVED it.  She had picked up the mantle of choir singer just like the rest of us!   The family tradition goes on!  Yeah!  "Sing, Sing, Sing, Sing!"  Who knows where she'll land! 

None of which came as any surprise to either her mom or to me!  Not at all!  After all, we were big fans of M-t-G's Cowboy Joe!!