I'm just there to look pretty and smile

The Voices in Bronze (my bell choir) had two performances this past week. The first was a church service, which was pretty awesome. Even though I messed up on the last song and ended up standing there, smiling like an idiot (because you always keep a smile on your face on stage - or altar as the case was) while inwardly hoping that nobody was noticing that I wasn't actually ringing any of my bells. I couldn't, since I got completely lost and didn't figure out what measure we were in until the very ending. Sigh. At least I did well in the first three songs. I also rocked the early morning rehearsal, although that probably doesn't count for anything.

Last night we went to a state nursing home. It was so much fun! I did great, the choir did wonderful, and our audience really seemed to enjoy the show. Well, there was the one lady who fell asleep in the middle of it, but everyone else stayed awake. And two people actually clapped. There was even one person who sang along!

After the concert, the choir served punch and cookies (sugar-free) to the residents. I got to hand out jingle-bell necklaces as thank you gifts to our audience. I've really missed my students, and getting to interact with the nursing home residents was wonderful. There was one blind guy (he's the one who sang along to the show), and when I gave him his necklace I asked him how he liked my playing. "I don't know, which one were you?" he asked. I told him that I was the pretty one up there, and that I could say that since he couldn't see to know if was lying. So the woman sitting next to him started shouting, "She's lying! She's lying!" But he was wonderful, insisting that he could tell I was beautiful. We all ended up laughing, with me threatening to steal back the woman's gift and the two of them paying me extravagant compliments in an effort to get a second necklace.

Sue, our director, taped both performances. Hopefully I can get a copy of at least one of the shows to share.

Whispered in the sounds of silence

I had some time after work today and rather than go home and risk being distracted, I decided to take my music binder to Starbucks to practice bells. Unlike most other instruments, you don't get to bring your bells home with you to practice. Instead, you have to rely on reading through the music and work out counting  your part in your mind. If you want to build muscle memory, you can wave around a couple of pens in place of the bells.

So I sat for two hours at Starbucks, where I drank too many espresso-based drinks -- because the extra caffeine in espresso sounded like such a good idea at the time -- and vigorously waved around my pens and markers to music heard only in my head. I managed to snag a nice-sized area to myself, despite the otherwise crowded location. To be honest, I think I scared everyone away, since I heard one little girl cry, "No, mommy, I don't want to sit by her. Let's just go home, please mommy!"

But the practice paid off. I managed to keep up with the bell choir for a change, with only a few obvious mis-rings. Last season, I did really well in the Boca bell choir. In fact, I was proud to call myself one of the best ringers in the choir. Looking back, the pride was probably misplaced. There were only two people in the bells last year who had rung before. All of the rest of us were new ding-a-lings without a clue of what we were doing. I had the advantage of actually reading music and knowing enough to keep smiling even when you made a mistake. (You would think that music majors, in their senior year of college, would have learned not to say "opps, sh*t" during a performance, especially during a church service. But apparently not.) This year, after waiting several months for the bell choir to start up again, I decided to join the bells at my church. I confidently told the choir director that yes, I was an experienced ringer. She wisely put me in a beginner's chair anyway. Which was really good, since this bell choir really rings out the sanctuary! As a beginner, I only have four bells and four chimes. The more experienced ringers have four bells in hand, which calls for some mighty fancy wrist work. Just imagine what the barristas at Starbucks would have thought of me flinging around that many pens!