Play It Again, Gracie

By now, my wife and I are old hats when it comes to attending our daughters music recital. That said, much like eating a chocolate angel doughnut, each time is a new experience and something that I thoroughly enjoy.

When we first started, it was just the students doing the piano, but since then they have expanded it to cover all the things the students are working on, giving us a mini musical variety show. At no charge, no less! Woot!

We arrived early to get our seats, with Grace in a lovely bluish-teal sweater and black pants, May sporting a new, snazzy black-and-white plaid outfit, and I in some of my finest Chip n’ Dale long sleeve apparel. I made a mistake early on, though; they do not have paper programs, but usually there is a QR code you can scan to get it on your phone. I forgot to do this, so I was not going to know the names of the musical pieces being performed.

…or would I??? Stay tuned!

The place was more crowded than last time, which was sort of expected. I mean, the space was just the lobby (which normally could hold about 15 people) and the adjoining room of the same size that already had a beautiful, luscious, black grand piano. Now, they were trying to squeeze into the remaining space around 50 people (students and all of the family members that came armed with their cell phone cameras), a couple of electric amps, microphone stands, a drum kit, monitor speakers, and a somewhat frazzled music director trying to traffic cop everyone into place.

As per usual, they had the kids perform in order of less complex to more complex, so no kid would feel uncomfortable playing something like “Chopsticks” after the previous kid knocked out Mozart’s Piano Sonata #11 or anything from Thelonious Monk.

I think I have mentioned it before, but for those of you new to the blog (all 3 of you) one of the things I love about these recitals is just how earnest the kids are, especially the youngest ones. They are just having fun playing music, and their enthusiasm often reminds me of Prince Akeem from “Coming to America:”

“I am very happy to be here!”

And hey – they are talented!

We started off with some performers playing little pieces from their piano books where the piano flies along with angel wings, defying all laws of physics, but hey, we are here for art.

Mixed in with them were a couple of young girls, maybe 6-8, that did some singing. The first one did a song that I think was called “I’m Not That Girl,” (I don’t recall the lyrics but I like to think that it was about the actress who lost out on the title role of the “That Girl” 70s sitcom) while the other knocked out “Let It Snow,” even giving it a powerful if slightly off-key final note. …I want to note for the record that she was still a far better singer than I.

After that, the more “advanced” group, including my daughter, were up. The first student was, much to my delight, a drummer!

Now, I played drums for a few years in my late twenties, so I felt the kinship, and I was honestly excited when I realized he was playing a piece he wrote himself. How could I tell? Oh, you innocent soul, I recognized in a heartbeat when, instead of pulling out a music sheet, he pulled out his own Target notebook that, when he opened it, displayed the beautiful penciled-in notes that he had jotted down.

He played pretty solid, aside from a miscue here and there (much like I did, so again, kinship), but what I was most impressed with was that when the rag he was using to dampen the bass drum just flopped down over his pedal foot in the middle of the song, he just ignored it and kept the beat rolling. Respect!

Oh, and I also noticed that as he played through the rock beat, the 6-year old girl in front of me and Gracie were both bobbing their heads in rhythm to music. Got some sprouting headbangers here, my friends!

Speaking of Gracie, when she took the stage (so to speak), of course May and I had to oblige with subsection 2.33.41 of the Parental Code of Performance Attendance and whip out our camera phones, but I only recorded part of it because, well, I wanted to actually watch the performance and enjoy it. It’s one thing to hear her practice on the keyboard at home, but the actual piano gives her those weighted keys, the proper foot pedals, and just enriches the sound in a way that we can’t get at home.

Oh sure, when she plays on the electric keyboard at home she loves to switch the actual sound over to other instruments, so I get the privilege of hearing the Classic Sonatina 1st movement as an accordion, the 2nd movement as a synth lead, and the rousing 3rd movement as the ever-popular drum kit, but hearing the whole thing on a proper piano is pretty nice, too.

At this point, we were getting into the older kids, so I think that they had more interest in personally picking the pieces that they wanted to play. Now, of course, we still had some classical piano (and guitar) pieces played, including one from a kid who was a budding virtuoso that was probably only in middle school but didn’t even need sheet music to play his incredibly complex piece, but nevermind that jaw-dropping talent; I want to point out that this is when it started turning into a series of Audio Jeopardy clues, as I was quickly recognizing a lot of the songs from the first few bars.

The first one was a bit of a lay-up, as the performer got up with the Super Mario Brothers piano songbook, and I practically squealed with glee. And sure enough, when she started to play, I instantly recognized the Super Mario Brothers game theme, one of the bedrock musical themes of my youth spent wisely stuck in my room trying to beat world 6-3. I wept tears of nostalgia and joy, while May pretended to not know me.

The second one I got was from the second young lady playing the acoustic guitar, and I was tickled pink to recognize it as “Zombie” by the Cranberries. To be fair, I needed her to get through the first verse before I buzzed in, but hey, I still got it before the actual song name was said.

Then there was the song “Burn” from Hamilton the Musical, sung by a high schooler, which I picked up on quickly thanks to the YouTube storyboard videos floating around, and the final piece I got as the whole recital was topped off with a group performance – known to insiders as a “band” – consisting of a student playing the guitar, the singer of “Burn” (who also happened to be his sister), and two of the teachers helping on bass and drums.

This was another easy one, as it was the immortal “Creep” by Radiohead. Again, I was totally rocking out – between this and Zombie, I was feeling like I was back in undergrad, and was even looking around to see if there were any signs about a 2-drink minimum or something. I also realized that “Creep” was a great song for the guitarist to shine, really, because the bass and drums were purely support, so you could really focus on the student’s guitar work. And when he got into the fret shredding part of the song, I could see that kid was indeed working – those fingers were white and frantic keeping that rhythm going.

All finished, the kids got some nice certificates, everyone in the audience snapped some more photos, and then we filed out into the late November night air.

With the recital over, I think Gracie can move on to another song to practice, and, I have it on good authority, that she just might very well be working on one of her own little compositions. So by this time next year I fully expect her to be doing her own show at Carnegie Hall.

Or, better yet, maybe she’ll do the soundtrack for the next Super Mario Brothers game! Even better!

No pressure, sweetie.