Do It For the Children [and other orchestral nightmares]

I have nieces and nephews.
This came as quite a shock to me, even though I saw them shortly after they were born. It is said there are no ugly babies. Wrong. This is just one of the many reasons I have a dog.

No one ever told me that being an uncle actually came with responsibilities. I was all set to be a bad influence... I've got that one down perfectly.  I can purchase toys and musical instruments that make horrible, loud noises, then leave their home. But no, there's stuff I gotta DO for the little so and sos. You will notice, although nobody else does, that I do not invite them for Marshall's chemotherapy party or birthdays. I'm considerate that way.

Two of the little blighters are in their orchestras. It's wonderful that they picked up an instrument, even if it happened at gunpoint. As a musician of many years, I still don't get the school program. They give (force) an instrument on a poor unsuspecting child, then demand that he play only ancient classical songs. If  anybody were to just stop and ask the child what instrument he wants to learn, then what music he'd like to play, you'd have a much happier and more cooperative little musician. Let's face it... the kid is going to want to play the guitar or drums*. Perhaps classical music is a concept whereby parents insist on not having their children play drums. There's something to be said for it.

I feel very safe in saying that after the child decides guitar or drums, he'd rather not play something by Handel, preferring Led Zeppelin or Megadeth. This will also upset the parents, unless they like Led Zeppelin or Megadeth. They might breathe a sigh of relief that the child doesn't play a drum machine along with Nikki Manaj mp3s.

My Uncle Responsibility for the week involved watching the orchestra perform. It became my responsibility in a second hand way, when the child asked my wife to please come to his concert. Like most of my life, I was an afterthought; a person who showed up attached to the popular aunt. This doesn't bother me at all, and makes for a great reading.

So there we were, walking into an elementary school. I dared not count the years since I've been in an elementary school (and the times I was asked to leave elementary schools). They decided that since there were a lot of people showing up, they'd use the gymnasium, with its hard, acoustically-hostile cinderblock construction. You know... instead of the auditorium, where it's comfortable and things sound good, plus the seats did not come out of an old torture chamber, like the folding ones in the gym.

It was Standing Room Only in the makeshift concert hall.  All the parents were out with their phones held up, focused on the spot where they knew their kid should be (they couldn't see them either).  I thought this a good time to search for MILFs, and it was, except the MILFs all stayed home, preferring to go to the earlier show (to avoid the guys at the later show, who would be searching for them). We had to be there early, although no one has been able to figure out why. Perhaps they wanted everybody to be good and agitated before the concert started. It works well for Guns n Roses.

The show started and although we were assured our nephew was there, no one could actually locate him. His cello dwarfs him to begin with. These kids did very well, all things considered. Everybody knows children under five feet tall cannot play as well as the taller kids.**  They played reasonably in tune, although not exactly in time with each other. Their teacher/conductor, an Asian lady (you think I'm kidding, don't you?) played piano. After only a few hours, we finally figured out the method behind the madness: the conductor was actually the performer, while the kids were convenient accompaniment. Put another way, the teacher was the Indy pace car, which ran at precisely 55mph, while the children raced their cars in front of her, behind her, in the pit, across the grass, or anywhere else that wasn't next to the pace car. No one seemed to notice this but me, judging by the fact that I was the only one in the room without a camera pointed in the general direction of the stage.

Please don't take my gentle mocking as an indictment of the childrens' talents. I do not expect them to perform like Itzach Perlman (yes, I spelled it wrong - go read some other sarcastic bastard's blog).

When my nephew's group was done, I applauded enthusiastically, then raced for the exit. Unfortunately, my tires were shredded by The Pit Boss, who semi-politely explained that there was another group playing shortly. As loud as it was in the room, everyone wondered where that soul-shattered SIGH came from.

The next group was over five feet tall, which increased my hopes that I could sit there for another four hours.***  As soon as they started, it became glaringly apparent that the charming young lady up front with the violin was intent on 'interpreting' the songs in her own style. Her own style was largely not playing the same notes as everybody else. The egregious out-of-tuneness went unnoticed also, except for the fact that it kept waking me up.

My nephew proudly told us he was first chair. We learned later that first chair meant he was the first one in that particular chair at the moment. The orchestras were so large that the basses and cellos were located offstage. This was also the reason I was given for my location offstage with my guitar. I'm sure it had absolutely nothing to do with my appearance or my playing.

Here's where things got hairy (not me, the orchestra): something got in my ear and kept trying to bore a hole through and start eating my brain. It took me a few seconds to figure it out.. the group had another 'individual stylist', like the young lady with the violin. He and his bass decided that they were not happy with the key the song was in and proceeded to make the changes he felt necessary. This came in the form of playing every note a half-step lower, which seemed to make him happy, as it went on for the whole concert.  For the non-musician readers, the worst musical noise you can hear, aside from the aforementioned Niki Manaj, is two instruments playing a half-step apart. It has been known to make people go through windows on the upper floors of tall buildings. You can feel it right where your coccyx (COCK-six) is, and it goes up your entire spine painfully, attempting to exit via the top of your head. Perhaps the reason they didn't use the auditorium was all the bits of brain matter on the ceiling.  In these sad financial times, public schools cannot always afford ceiling cleaning services. They either hold functions in the gym or pray that no one looks up.

I thought I was home free when I got home, but it was not to be. Another nephew has an orchestral performance in three weeks. If I am not there, his mother will TALK to me. A lot. For a long time. With her grating Philadelphia accent and a liberal helping of Guilt. But the joke's on her... I'm bringing Bluetooth earpieces, so I can listen to Hendrix mangle a guitar while the children molest Bach.

*************************************************************

*Unless the family is Asian, in which case it will be an orchestral instrument and classical music, which they will practice daily and excel, while we discover that 80% of the orchestra is Asian.

Before you go off on me like Nagasake, stereotypes don't appear from a vacuum. This is exactly the makeup of one nephew's orchestra. I looked around and noticed that most of the musicians were Asian (this is strictly an observation). They did not, however, have cameras, but on the other hand, it was very difficult to get out of the parking lot...

**I just made that up.

***20 minutes.

Three Quarters Asleep - A Classical Concerto for Children and Octopi

The beauty of being without children is self-evident; not so with nieces and nephews. Twice a year, or something that feels like five times a year, one of the little blighters has a 'concert' at school. In English, this means that the school 'orchestra' is playing. Unfortunately it also means we run the very real risk of Christmas/holiday music and having to sit through it.

I recently had an 'animated' conversation with the child's mother about the entire musical question. Follow along here.. when is it a natural instinct for a child of late single-digit age to pick up a violin? For that matter, when is it a natural instinct for a child to pick up a violin for any part of his childhood? We know I don't have children, except for the kind who can't hold a violin, but I can claim some expertise in that I was a child at one point (a matter with which my mother will vehemently disagree - she says I emerged a small adult). I can at least speak for myself when stating categorically that it never occurred to me to pick up a violin for any purpose that involved anything but mischief. Wholesale destruction was off the table, as I couldn't afford to replace them. Granted, I am a rather extreme case (again, Mom will heartily agree), but I was always a guitar player, from the picture of me at 4, in front of the tree, playing a plastic guitar (left-handed), to the abortive try at about 8, to the almost fatal drive at 12.

At no point did I pick up an orchestra instrument, except for that one time that I wanted to see what would happen if I took a huge old bass, put it on my lap like an electric guitar, and try to play it upside-down. This almost worked, right up until the orchestra teacher caught me doing it. So our first item of confusion is why children pick up an orchestral instrument in the first place. After they pick the dratted thing up, what is the first thing they say to themselves? Gee, self, wouldn't it be cool to play some music that was written two hundred years or so before I was born? You know, instead of that music my parents or I listen to daily... Yes, there will be certain children, those children, who pick up an instrument because they're expected to and they excel at it. We're not talking about those children, we're talking about the normal children (welcome back to school, folks).

So during my animated conversation with my nephew's mother, I asked these questions.  Mom, being a rather single-minded person, managed to pull through this conversation unscathed, largely by completely ignoring any question I asked her. This is a technique that works impossibly well for anything from instrumental discussions to Congressional grilling. She kept talking about how well he was doing. At no point did I hear anything about asking the child if he wanted to play an instrument, particularly this instrument. The wife asked him, at some point, if he liked the violin and he stated categorically that he did not. Having been a child, I can guarantee that this is not the correct way to go about encouraging a child to pick up an instrument. The child needs to want to, plus the material needs to be relevant to make it interesting for the player.  Meanwhile, the kids rush to pick up my guitar when I bring it over - a sign of an instrument they want to play. Well, that and the drums - an instrument taken up solely to annoy those around them, especially their parents.

As it turns out, one child needed a better instrument and his old one got handed down to another. No word on whether that child wants a violin either but apparently this is not an issue. Bent on further destruction (for some reason I like to pull the tiger's tail), I asked the parent about left-handed violins, as one of the kids is a lefty. This caused a bit of confusion on Mom's part, but the kids set out to figure this out. It turns out at least one of them holds the violin left-handed, a fact that caused much laughter on the part of all involved, especially when they realized I was poking their mother. Mom, for her part, managed to skirt the discussion by employing her time-tested method of ignoring the question (and me, which is a popular pastime for many who know me).


THE CONCERT

We arrived thirty minutes early, in hopes of getting a parking spot. As I might have mentioned, this particular school has an interesting parking spot layout, which guarantees that anyone not arriving at least thirty minutes early will have to take a shuttle to the school, having parked in the next county. As this happened three times, I eventually learned my lesson. Sorta. Mrs lefty has a handicapped tag, so we looked for a handicapped spot. We found them, and we found all five of them full because no one told me you have to arrive a full sixty minutes early for a handicapped spot (so you can mill around uncomfortably inside). I hate this place but this is my nephew's show... so we parked a respectable distance from the building, in a spot not requiring additional transport to the venue. Mrs lefty wore her trademark antlers, designed solely to get a rise out of the children's mother. She always succeeds.

There were choruses. Again, choruses singing ancient music the children had never heard before, nor will they ever again. My guess is that their teacher decided on the songs to impress someone, possibly two hundred year dead composers, who would never weigh in on whether they liked the selection or not. If they do weigh in, I want to be there to hear it. The thought that never occurred to the teacher or the students is that the audience never heard the songs either. This is cruel, as the audience, there out of obligation (except for the parents, each with their own camcorder and phone), is made to endure children performing songs they don't know. Much squirming ensued.

As if ancient songs weren't enough, the children also sang songs from recent movies, Disney included. Assuming for the moment that Disney does not sue the entire school district, state board of education, and each student individually, what is the point of singing songs from popular movies? The kids might decide they'd rather sing two hundred year old songs instead, or rather the parents might decide they like hearing two hundred year old songs instead. This is complicated by what one would expect from a restaurant or airplane: a screaming child, alternating between loud screams of distress and loud screams of joy. Most people, except for those in restaurants and airplanes, know when their child is squalling like an entire room full of children with diaper rash, and remove them promptly. This parent apparently wanted to share the joy and distress with an auditorium of one hundred proud parents and several hundred more who showed up (or were dragged) out of obligation.

I'm sorry - my medicine hasn't kicked in yet.

After this stunning vocal treat, it was time for the Younger Concert: fifty children manhandling out-of-tune brown orchestral stringed instruments. The director was an obviously very talented individual, causing one to wonder how she managed to produce an orchestra in which forty percent of the members were inherently incapable of playing in tune.  Perhaps, like the proud parent of the screaming infant, she did not hear the out-of-tune children.  It is said that people who live near airports no longer hear the airplanes, so at least they have that going for them.

Let me step outside of the story for a second to state that I am not, in any way, allowing my many years in music compare to what these brave children were doing. That would be grossly unfair. Some children can't sing, so it's not fair to judge the chorus. Instrumentalists, however, merit a bit more scrutiny. One cannot expect famous talent from these kids, but one can expect them to be in tune, even if someone else tuned their instruments for them. One violin player can listen to the next player over and instantly know something is wrong when both are playing the 'same' note (trust me, this is fact). Obviously this did not bother the children, but, judging from some of the audience grimaces, bothered others. Still, it was evident that everyone got a trophy for participating.

After this, the Older Concert commenced. It was obvious that there was talent. It was also visually apparent that the kids were coming into their own as individuals. There was a child who looked like he could be blind but perhaps not, as everything he did seemed to occur half a beat behind the other children. The ones with more hair on one side than the other, and the children who would soon discover that their wiring was not like that of most of their friends. They too performed the songs of very dead composers, as well as horribly-arranged holiday tunes from ancient societies in languages no longer known to man.

After the chorus abated, it was time for the music. It became immediately apparent what an additional year could do for students on their pre-chosen instruments. Only twenty percent of these musicians were out of tune, as opposed to the previous forty. Unfortunately both sets of musicians featured some kids who seemed to be playing with the orchestra at the next school down the street. They did not necessarily play out of tune so much as out of time. They were like an echo of the kids who were playing in time, causing great commotion, mostly ignored by the audience.

After the show, I commented to my nephews' father that the child showed great improvement, with he group being nowhere near as out-of-tune as the other group (my nephew being perfectly in tune, of course). At this point, I heard a female voice behind me, talking to my nephew about some important fact or other. I turned around to find a male student, with too much hair on one side, who would soon discover that his wiring was not like that of most of his friends. Fortunately, no one would be surprised or care.