Labor Day Weekend Concert

I bought this music on eBay when I first started the cello. It was in a collection of "easy music for beginning cellists." It is almost entirely first position, but does have its little challenges and is fun to play, and I am happy to finally have the opportunity to perform it!

Saturday, tomorrow, is our big concert of the summer. The Symphony is performing a Pops concert at the Fairgrounds at 7 pm to crowds estimated to number over 7,000, and we're part of the background music for the afternoon's festivities that lead up to the big concert. Both my flute choir and my early music group are playing, alternating half-hour segments for over two hours. (Three of us play in both groups.)

We've been performing at this event for the last six years. The first few years we played outside in a tranquil garden setting (as people walked past, eager to set up their chairs for the Pops), but the last couple of years have been inside an airport-hanger sort of a building, with the artists, mostly painters, showing their art and demonstrating portrait painting and other techniques. It has been a nice blend of music and art, and people have lingered longer to listen.

This year they have doubled the number of artists, adding a myriad of craftspeople and children's activities: jewelry-makers, ceramicists, photographers, and visual artists, all demonstrating their crafts, along with puppet shows, face painters, and other children's activities. It might be a little crowded. Hopefully we will be heard above the din. More important is that we hear each other.

We have been given us a stage, though, and microphones, so in a sense we are being elevated. :-) I am a little nervous; I should have practiced more. But both groups are sounding good. As long as we can hear each other, we should be fine. There is a certain comfort in being background music--no one is listening to your every note; but, on the other hand, we do want people to hear our delightful music that we have worked on for months! :-)