Festival

For the past 8 years in the month of February the boys have performed (for two judges) in piano Festival.  And today for the first time all 4 boys are prepped with the required two songs and performed them during the same group time slot. This would be Jonah's first time at festival and Caleb's 7th.  When we walked in with 5 minutes to spare......true Harris fashion, we had the usual comments about if they are all ours and if they all play piano.  The majority of parents there have either one or maybe two kids.  After everyone sat down a little 5 year old Chinese boy got up and played beautifully.....very automatic, precise, and in perfect form.  I could tell that Jonah was a little nervous knowing that he was to go next and his pieces were much simpler.  Now he's been only playing for 6 months and of all our boys has the most stage freight.  So I knew he was dying inside and I was so proud that he confidently handed his music to the judges and made his way through both of his pieces perfectly!  Oh, the look of relief on his face was priceless!  Next to go was Gavin who nailed his pieces and sat down with the same relief, then Liam, whose songs I'm partial to this year as they are amazingly beautiful, went up with his typical nerves of steel and played his songs perfectly (he did tell me he made one mistake, which I did hear, but very minor).  Caleb was the last to play in the entire session and he was a little more nervous than I have seen him in years past and this resulted in a few minor errors in the first song, but he kept his composure and then the second he played absolutely flawless.  Caleb sneaked a peek at his judges score and it looks like he got one superior and one excellent, and we expect that the other will follow suit, or some might get what is called a "double superior" when both judges give a superior rating.

We celebrated with our first trip to Great Harvest Bread (a flashback from my college days at BYU) where they boys were thrilled to receive a free slice of bread.  We bought steamed milk from the coffee house next door and splurged with some GH scones and muffins.  Yummy!

The next stop was to the piano shop in town, which I was reminded to never do again with all 4 boys.  The cacophony of noise was comical.  Picture all 4 boys playing on different grand pianos as I tried to talk to the guy and Jared wandered around in the store.  At one point I told them they could not play unless they had the damper down but even then it was too much and we finally had to put the no playing at all rule down.  We are still not sure what we'll get, but our piano tuner has been suggesting that it is time to move up being that we can't keep this piano in tune for more than 3 months at a time.  Which is a real bummer as I love the sound of our Kawai.

Before we bid farewell to the songs they played them one more time for Jared to video and then again for Grannie Knight who loves listening to piano music more than almost anyone I know.  We are in the process of considering moving out her Steinway upright which she has generously given us.  She grew up with it and being that she is 92 years old, we think it is probably close to 100.  It might not turn out to be a great piano to play on, but it will be fun to have in the music room (which doesn't actually exist yet....but I've got plans, oh do I have plans :) )