I can't believe how infrequently I post anymore. I guess the lack of progress on all fronts is not much to write about. I probably exaggerate.
So where are we? Tess is now trying to get the bowings corrected for Happy Farmer. I've been letting her practice it all wrong, due to frequent inattentiveness. Now certain bad habits are ingrained. I hope we can undo the damage before the spring recital... otherwise she will be doing something safer, Minuet Three. Alicia has begun to work with Tess on her vibratto. This is fun to watch. I have always been mystified by the technique. In fact, I was so happy on Tuesday when Alicia explained how to get a vibratto on an open string note. very satisfying. Because my note-taking is so poor, I've been taking more video at lessons. I'm hoping to get some more of them uploaded onto YouTube eventually. See video
Julien is doing well with viola at Wendy's studio. The spring concert was on Tuesday evening. They do not do solo recitals. The studio concert was very impressive, I thought. They did Pachelbel Canon. Jules opted out of that one-- didn't feel ready.
She did play several songs, including May Song. I thought she did a wonderful job. Too bad I am so scatterbrained that we actually left her nice dress at home! We had to go to Vespers and then all the kids were going to change into their recital clothes before heading over. Tess and Graham's clothes were in the bag, but not Julien's dress. In a pinch, I had her put on Tessie's little dress. Luckily Julien was able to squeeze into it. Tess went casual...
Wendy had the parents play Twinkle at the recital rehearsal. So I rented my own violin finally and am trying to learn how to Twinkle. It is so much harder than I thought it would be. I cannot coordinate the fingers and the bowhand. I am too slow. But it is fun to try. My father called me today on his way home from work. He was so happy because he had heard from my mom that I had rented an instrument. His classic joke with us is: "I am going to start my guitar lessons on Monday." Our whole lives we have been waiting for him to start his guitar lessons. He never has.
I am realizing it has been more than a month since I've posted. I can't believe I didn't even post pictures from the recital! Things have just been out of control lately, with the amount of work I have taken on. I went to Baltimore right after Christmas for the Am. Philosophical Assoc. meeting, and gave a "comment" on a paper there. During the first week of January we were off to the Turks and Caicos for a little vacation. Now it is back to the freezing cold, teaching at EMU, etc..
Tess is now starting to learn Minuet Three, and is working on the preview/practice spot for that hard part of Gossec Gavotte. I can't imagine her little fingers will ever be quick enough to get through those slurs. But hopefully soon. It feels like it has taken us much longer to get to this point than it should have. Things really slowed down, somewhere along the way. Tess and I are not as religiously devoted to a long practice time every evening. I am lucky to just have her get the instrument out. No beating myself up over it, though. She's moving at her pace. And I'm moving at the pace I can manage right now.
Let's see.... here's a photo from the December recital!
Tess leading group lesson on Friday...
So our last home practice was actually very good. She got out her music stand (which always indicates "I'm serious today!" Her review was very good. I talked to her about the poor bowing at group and she was pretty upset because she hadn't realized what she had done and it bothered her that she had done something wrong... Anyway, the minuets were sounding good. Still not getting the fourth finger extended well enough to hit the fourth tape. But she is so aware of the problem now, and that I will stop her and make her start over if she does it wrong.
In the past two weeks Tess has lost four teeth. It was hysterical watching her try to eat a hot dog today. This is her new toothless smile.
Tessie is learning Minuet 2. Has the fingering for the first part down pretty well, and we are working on "the hard parts" of the rest. She is doing G major scale with slurs. Working on finding Dsharp. Most of all: trying to WATCH HER FINGERS. This is getting ridiculous. Alicia is trying everything... "Pay attention to the second finger this time". I mean, isolating which finger you are watching is getting pretty extreme in terms of making it a focus during practice time, especially when she has so many review pieces under her belt getting into late book one. She is just playing so sloppily lately, and trying to play too fast. So the big problematic corollary of all this, is that I am not enjoying our practice time together at all. She wants to do well. She tries. But she just doesn't give a flip about getting her fingers down precisely on the tapes. I am beyond annoyed at this point.
Wow.
But she was a very cute Velma for Halloween this year.
