Ease On Down the Road

Current mental soundtrack: "Brand New Day" from The Wiz

Two dress rehearsals and six shows this week: M was at every single one of them, while B and I only worked half of them (plus attending one show each). I was on backstage duty: opening and closing the back and wing curtains, helping move set pieces, and being part of the balloon-wrestling team. (One show there were six people trying to get that balloon to glide off the stage--it kept getting stuck on everything possible! By the last show, we managed it with only three people.)

M at the light board (poor kid saw the show EIGHT times this week!)

B was cast as part of the Yellow Brick Road, and also as a Winkie. Lots of dancing, a little bit of singing, and a lot of fun! We were not permitted to take photos during the shows, but here are some before and after show photos:

L (crow) and B (Yellow Brick Road)

L (Addaperle), B (brick), and M

L (Addaperle), L (crow), and B (brick)

Wait, Did I Remember To Put Sleeping and Eating In the Schedule?

Projects completed this week (besides the usual work, chauffeur duties, grocery shopping, cooking, laundry, and rehearsals for S&P and Voci):

• Two Peter Pan rehearsals at B's school (co-music director)
• Attempted retrieval of M's cell phone, which was confiscated on Monday when it rang in French class. The school has instituted a new rule that confiscated phones have to be picked up by a parent. Of course, when I showed up on Wednesday afternoon, no one could find the phone. M did get it back yesterday.
• One rehearsal for Annie at M's school. I helped out in costumes--none of the other moms on duty that day could tie a tie. I only had to stay for the first hour or so, but when I went to pick up M at 6:30, I had to wait until 7:10 before he finally appeared. Fortunately, Voci rehearsal is only five minutes from my house, so I still made it on time.
• Two dozen cupcakes baked, filled, and frosted last night. Four will be included with a dinner I'm bringing to some friends [see below], and the rest are for S&P retreat on Saturday. (Vanilla with raspberry filling and buttercream icing.)
• Apartment in Rome booked for July (had to dig out the fax machine that's been stored in our garage for the last four or five years)

Projects in progress:

• Making dinner tonight for a friend who's just had surgery. I will make potato soup and pick up a loaf of bread this afternoon before taking B to ballet class.
• Organizing B's group to audition for Orinda Idol. The signup deadline is next week, and B and her best friend L (who sang together in the last two competitions) waited until this week to decide they wanted to try again. L's mom wasn't thrilled by the idea, but B really wanted to do it, so she's going along with it. After several phone calls between the girls, they finally decided who they wanted to join them this year. They talked with their friends yesterday, and I finally had a spare minute last night to e-mail the moms. Both moms got back to me within half an hour with positive responses! (It appears that a lot of moms are online between 10:00 and 11:00 pm.)
• Picking suitable music for the Orinda Idol group. I have been collecting pieces for the last couple of months, but not knowing who would be singing, I have some SSA and some SSAA pieces. Now to figure out what will work with the group we have.
• Baking (scheduled for tonight after ballet) and decorating (scheduled for tomorrow night after retreat) B's birthday cake for Sunday.
• Putting together the treasure hunt for B's birthday party on Sunday. Most of the clues are prepared on my computer, but not yet printed out. Two clues still need some work before Sunday. I have no idea if the clues are too easy or two hard for these girls.
• Prepping for S&P retreat tomorrow. I'm temporarily the alto section leader (until D returns in the fall), so I have to run the alto sectional. As assistant conductor, I get to run the SA sectional that follows. (At least the cupcakes for lunch are already done.) Retreat is 10:00-4:00, which pretty much wipes out the entire day.

Neverland Redux

The spring musical at B's school was announced right before Christmas break, and guess what? They're doing Peter Pan this spring! (M's school did the play, not the musical, so it's technically a different show.)

I haven't posted much recently, because this spring I'm co-musical director, and I've been busy trying to get the music in order. The rental company provided scripts for the kids, an e-mail version of the score (because they didn't mail the hard copy on time), and a hard copy of the score by mail. Naturally, none of them are the same, even before the director started making his own changes! In addition, both versions of the score have the orchestration reduced for one piano. Since we have in the "pit" both a piano and a keyboard (and three pairs of hands to play them), plus a percussionist, I've been re-orchestrating the reduced score for our forces by listening to the movie over and over.

The Mary Martin version of Peter Pan is extremely hard to come by on DVD. Even Netflix doesn't have one to rent out! Fortunately, someone has posted it on YouTube (in fifteen segments), so I've been able to listen to it there. I had started by buying the CD, but the vocals are so loud that I can barely hear the orchestration, and they also left off the non-vocal selections, like the overture.

Second Star on the Right

The middle school production of Peter Pan opens on Tuesday afternoon. M is on tech crew again, running the light board for the "Hook" cast. Although they're not doing the musical version, I'm spending next week at the keyboard as the voice of Tinkerbell. It's fun--a lot different from the usual accompaniment.

The producer loaned me a DVD of the previous production (from four years ago), and I thought Tinkerbell's voice was pretty boring. It was mostly the same tinkle, no matter what she was saying. I've put a little more thought into it, tailoring the bells to her mood, and what I imagine she's saying. The Tinkerbell from the "Tink" cast seems to appreciate it--she's come up to me after both the rehearsals I've been to with them and thanked me for the great job I'm doing.

The final dress is on Monday, then the two preview shows are after school on Tuesday and Thursday. Friday and Saturday I play two shows each, then we'll be done until spring musical season.

The Sound of Silence

DH is in Australia this week (and going straight to Washington DC tomorrow for another week). B is on the second day of her three-day field trip. It's not my day to drive the middle-school carpool, so I won't see M for another 4.5 hours. Even the dogs are being quiet today!

I'm working at home, enjoying the quiet, and occasionally moving loads of laundry around. I should probably visit the grocery store this afternoon, as M would like me to make him dinner :-)

I'll enjoy it while it lasts. Tomorrow B comes home, then her Orinda Idol group is rehearsing here at 5:00. Yes, she's been talked into Orinda Idol again. She didn't think it was that exciting last year, but her friends talked her into it. They'll be auditioning on Saturday morning with "The One Feather Tail of Miss Gertrude McFuzz/Amazying Mayzie" from Seussical. S is reprising her role as Gertrude, L is singing Mayzie, and B and K have been recruited as Bird Girls. Should be fun! They've had one rehearsal so far, and they sounded good. I'm going to try to convince them tomorrow that they need to focus more on singing with the mikes (handhelds), and not so much on running around the stage!

I ordered the accompaniment CD from Amazon, and had fun using Garage Band to edit the accompaniment track. Auditions are limited to 2 minutes, and the full piece is 3.5 minutes, so something had to go. Simply cutting them off at two minutes resulted in the Bird Girls getting to sing about three notes, so S's mom and I did some creative editing at the previous rehearsal (while I was sitting at the piano). The intro is gone, several measures of the interlude between the two pieces are gone, and they're only doing the middle third of Mayzie's song. I was impressed with how easy it is to edit this stuff in Garage Band. I had already worked out at the piano the measures to delete (had to do it in a way that made sense harmonically), and DH couldn't tell when I finished the first draft that anything was missing!

Saturday will be crazy. B is going to be dropped off at L's house around 10:00, so L's mom can take then both to their 10:50 audition. I'll be at M's 10:30 fencing class in Richmond. At 12:00, M and I leave fencing class. We drive back home, hastily throw B and Poppy in the car, and go to the 1:00 obedience class in Oakland. At 2:00, I drive home, fling everyone out of the car, grab my concert gear (hopefully not forgetting anything important), and drive back to Oakland for a Voci concert. Call is at 2:30, I'm hoping to be there by 3:00. Come hear a fabulous concert!

Always Look On the Bright Side of Life

Current mental soundtrack: see title ^

Today I saw Spamalot with the family and some friends. It was a really fun show--the whole family enjoyed it. I picked it over Wicked because I thought the guys would enjoy this one more, and I think I was right. There were a lot of empty seats, though--I hope ticket sales pick up! After the show, we had a lovely dinner at Khan Toke Thai House. The kids remember this one as the place where you get to sit on the floor, but DH and I just like the food and the atmosphere. They do have cutouts under most of the tables so you don't actually have to sit cross-legged for long periods. B & M are now upstairs playing Rock Band with my sister.

It's been a nice, relaxing weekend so far. Yesterday was the first free day I've had in over a month, and I couldn't figure out what to do with myself! I finally settled on a little shopping with B (I desperately needed a new pair of black high-tops, as the holes in mine were getting pretty big), followed by some time cleaning up the back yard. I deadheaded the roses, weeded (found a three-foot high weed behind a container), and filled the green bin up with miscellaneous twigs and sticks that have been lying around for months.

Not too much planned for tomorrow. B has a playdate with a ballet buddy, I have someone coming over to rehearse a solo, then B and three of her friends are rehearsing at our house for next weekend's Orinda Idol auditions. They're going to sing "Amayzing Mayzie" from Seussical.

How Lucky You Are!

Current mental soundtrack: "How Lucky You Are" from Seussical

Here is our Yertle:

The mom in charge of costumes is very talented! The green shoes belong to B, but the rest of the costume was provided by the costume committee. There's also a judge's robe that she wore for the final scene.

Yertle & Bird Girl

Jungle Creature, Jungle Creature, & Yertle

Seussical went quite well, and the kids had a lot of fun. From the pit, the most interesting moments were when the Tuesday cast suddenly decided to skip three pages of music, and when the Wickersham Brothers from both casts decided that the measures of rest before their entrances were unnecessary. We managed to catch up :-) There were also some agonizingly long moments on stage as kids tried to remember their lines, or were late for entrances, but the show (eventually!) went on.

Before the Show
Back: Jungle Creature, Who, Who, Who, Jungle Creature
Front: Jungle Creature, Gertrude McFuzz, Who, Yertle the Turtle, Bird Girl, Jungle Creature

Me at the keyboard

Oh, The Thinks You Can Think

Current mental soundtrack: "Oh, The Thinks You Can Think" from Seussical

Seussical opens today--I'll let you know later how the shows go. Live performance is always unpredictable, and when a bunch of elementary-school kids are involved, it becomes even more interesting. There will be three of us in the "pit" trying to keep everyone on track (Music Director on piano, Director on percussion, and me on keyboard). As I discovered during yesterday's dress rehearsal, having multiple musicians (and no conductor) makes it a little more challenging when a kid drops a line, or jumps ahead to the wrong verse. The three of us have to somehow read each others' minds and figure out what we're doing when things go wrong.

Like everything else the kids do, this is a fundraiser, so in addition to our parental volunteer time, we're also supposed to provide baked goods to sell at intermission. In honor of the Dr. Seuss theme, I baked four dozen Truffula Trees last night:


They don't look exactly like Truffula Trees, as I had to make do with a palm-tree cookie cutter, which has more fronds and a shorter, thicker trunk. Close enough, though--once I added the colored icing, they started to look more Seussian.

Show Biz, Part 2

Update: S was cleared by the orthopedist to perform her solo in the show, so B is off the hook. S will not be in the chorus numbers in the first 3/4 of the show, but she can hobble around on her crutches well enough to sing the last part. B is quite relieved--she was up last night worrying about fitting into a different cast with only one rehearsal. The funniest thing is what finally reassured her enough to go to sleep: I reminded her that the Tuesday cast chorus did not (and does not!) seem to know where to go when on the stage, so it wouldn't matter if she was in the right place or not!

Now I just need to finish learning the keyboard part before Friday...

Show Biz

B's life just got a little more interesting. Seussical is scheduled for this weekend, and we just found out that her counterpart in the other cast has broken her foot, so B is doing all four shows this weekend. Dress rehearsal for the other cast is tomorrow, so she'll be scrambling to find out where S stands in the chorus numbers (standing order in each cast was determined by height, not role).

I really feel sorry for S--she put a lot of work into this, and happened to have an accident the week of the show. I hope she gets a really good role next year!

Three P's

1. Mr. P
Today B and I went to see her music teacher, Mr. P., perform in Seussical. It was a great show, and the entire audience was kids and parents from her school. I'm really impressed by people who do theater in their "spare time": rehearsing five nights a week on top of a day job is not easy!

2. Poppy
It's hard to take pictures of a dog! I know it's a little blurry, but this is the best one so far.


3. Petits Fours
I finished the petits fours for tomorrow's Voci fundraiser. They look pretty good for a first try, but they're a little on the bland side (vanilla cake, one layer of vanilla buttercream, and vanilla coating). Maybe next time I'll try something more flavorful.

Both kids also commented on the red ones looking like little cheeses: maybe red wasn't the best choice for the ganache. It seemed to fit with the "Flame of Love" theme of the fundraiser, but I guess in the future I'll stick to pink.

Unable to Commit

I've finally filled out the committment form for B's spring ballet performance, but I had to add several footnotes, as we don't know if we can commit to some of the things on the list! The ballet school requires students to indicate their availability to perform with either Cast A or Cast B, or both. By checking a cast, we are saying that we will be able to attend all the performances and required rehearsals for that cast.

Students are required to attend all rehearsals to perform, but they don't post the actual Saturday rehearsal times until the week before rehearsal, so we have to block out 12:00-6:00 pm on those days. B will have a spring musical performance on Saturday, May 2, but the producers don't know yet what time the performance is. So, at this point, we have agreed to attend two required activities on May 2, with no idea what time either one is actually going to happen.

Cast A (the best fit for our schedule) also comes with an outreach performance that takes place on a weekday morning, so she would have to miss a half day of school. Normally, that's not a problem. However, B's school has scheduled STAR testing that week. Naturally, the school doesn't yet know when her testing will be scheduled (a couple of tests over a two-week period), so we had to include yet another footnote on the ballet form.

Oh, and on the parent side of the form, I added a third footnote. I would like to work backstage, as I did for the Nutcracker, but I can only make the Cast A performances, and would have to leave dress rehearsal early. (I have my own performances at the same time as Cast B.)

Oh, the Thinks You Can Think

Current mental soundtrack: "Oh, the Thinks You Can Think" from Seussical the Musical

Today was the first rehearsal for the spring musical (Seussical Jr.) at B's school. Since the music director is out of town this week, I got to sub as rehearsal accompanist. However, the scripts for the kids haven't arrived yet, so they weren't able to get much singing done. They blocked the opening number, which is pretty complicated!

B is in the Thursday cast (yes, I'm doing this again on Thursday), and she's really excited that she got a solo part. Yertle the Turtle is the judge in the trial scene at the end of the show, and she sings with the Jungle Citizens during the rest of the show.

Seussical was not a musical that I was familiar with, but we bought a CD and have been listening to it in the car. It has a lot of fun music, and I'm looking forward to seeing the show in May.

Round And Round We Go

Four trips to the elementary school today! DH did the first trip, dropping B off for school at 8:00. I was next, picking her up at 12:20 (they're on an abbreviated schedule this week for parent-teacher conferences). We went back at 1:45 for B's 2:00 audition for the spring musical, and also stopped by the book fair. Last trip was DH and I at 4:00, for B's conference.

At 5:00, B and I left our house for the trip to the ballet school in Berkeley (normally about 20 minutes). I drove through town, made a right onto the freeway onramp, and discovered that traffic was at a dead stop. It took another 10 minutes to make my way around the cloverleaf (finally driving on the shoulder with the other cars that were trying to exit the mess) and leave the freeway. We made a U-turn and decided to attempt one of the other routes over the hills, but traffic on the main road was so backed up (presumably because of the freeway problem) that we had still not managed to leave town at 5:25! At that point we decided to make another U-turn and just go home, as B informed me that students who arrive too late for class are not allowed to participate.

The Hills Are Alive...

Last night I watched The Sound of Music with the kids. It was the first time M & B had seen it, and I only got M to watch by promising him there would be Nazis with guns :-)

B loved it, and wants to watch it again. M admitted that it was okay (high praise from an 11-year-old boy), although he kept rolling his eyes whenever people burst into song at inappropriate moments. He does have a point--the gazebo scene where Captain von Trapp and Maria sing "Something Good" is especially bad. I just finished watching the interview with Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer on the 40th-anniversary DVD, and it turns out they too had a hard time controlling their laughter in that scene.

Next on the list: The King and I.

It's a Golden Day

The musical is over, but I seem to be living with Willy Wonka and Veruca Salt. All day long, I hear either M singing "Pure Imagination" or B singing "I Want it Now!". Maybe we can form our own musical theater troupe :-)

I played keyboard (banging out the melody, while the music director played the piano accompaniment) for three of the four performances, and the kids were very impressive. Fourth and fifth graders singing, acting, and dancing. In any live performance, there are usually what I call "interesting moments," and this was no exception, but the kids got through it all. Missing props, missed entrances, and Charlie choking on a chocolate wrapper and having to be led offstage to cough it up. Some of them really showed a lot of poise. One of the Willy Wonkas (the show is double cast) ad libbed wonderfully when the curtain didn't open at the right time: "We will conduct the next part of our tour by boat. [pause in front of closed curtain] We will conduct the next part of our tour BY BOAT. [pause] Now where did I leave that boat? [pause] I know I left it somewhere around here. [the curtain FINALLY opened to reveal the pink candy boat, and stagehands sprinting off to the sides].

I missed the last show to perform at S&P's annual House Music fundraiser. B and her best friend started off the show by singing "The Bear in Tennis Shoes," complete with original choreography. This is always a fun concert--an eclectic mix of music. Mozart arias, Broadway tunes, folk music, and everything else. M was at the last performance of the musical (he ran the light board this year), but the rest of our family enjoyed the concert.

Scrumpdiddlyumptious

Today is opening day for Willy Wonka at the kids' school. It's been fun watching it come together. I'm really impressed by all the work that's gone into this, and by the fact that the school's choral music teacher has these kids (4th and 5th graders) doing a full-length musical every year. I've never heard of another elementary school doing musicals like this--only high schools and some middle schools.

The dress rehearsals this week have been chaotic, like dress rehearsals always are, but everything seems to be coming together. The Music Director is playing the accompaniment on the piano, and I'm helping out the singers on keyboard. As of yesterday's dress rehearsal, the keyboard was there, but no amp or light. So, I sat in the dark and played music that the singers couldn't hear :-) Both of those things are supposed to arrive today, so I'll go to the school a little early and check out the sound balance with the amp. Hopefully I'll get it right, and won't drown out the soloists.

We have a Wii!

The Wii finally arrived on Monday afternoon. I had suggested to the kids on the way home from school that they should empty the dishwasher and practice the piano when they got home, so they could play when it arrived. Well, it appeared on our porch, and the dishwasher was still full, and no one had turned on the (digital) piano, so the box came in and sat while we went out to rehearsal.

Yesterday we finally unpacked it. After dinner (we had a dress rehearsal for the school musical until 6:00), B took a shower, M did his online homework, and I set the whole thing up. We only tried out Wii Sports, but had a great time.

The Dutch irises in the front yard are in full bloom now, and the bearded irises are not far behind. Once DH returns with the camera (tonight), I'll post a picture. In the back yard, there are roses everywhere. There's one pink bush, in particular, that seems to be very prolific.

Salut Printemps!

After a week's hard work in getting our finances in order, I thought I deserved a little time off. So, on Tuesday, since the kids got out of school early, we had lunch at In-N-Out, then drove up to Fairfield for a free tour of the Jelly Belly factory. I highly recommend both of those stops :-)

My free time over the last two days was spent preparing music for various rehearsals. I subbed at a Voci rehearsal Wednesday night (as assistant director), and filled in again today (Thursday) as rehearsal pianist for the school musical.

I haven't been out to look at my garden since spring officially began late last night, but the last time I checked, there were a bunch of California poppy seedlings coming up in front of the fence, and the clematis I planted last fall has a bunch of new green shoots (it looked very dead all winter).

Oh, and those of you who have sung under my direction will probably recognize the title of this post. I just had the opportunity to sing it again a couple of weeks ago at the Voci fundraiser. Great piece!

Hornswogglers and Snozzwangers

My new MacBook arrived today! A 13-inch black 2.4 GHz machine. I've been happily using a a 12-inch PowerBook for the last couple of years, but it's reached an age where the latest software won't install on it, and there wasn't enough space on the hard drive for everything I wanted. My boss wanted me to upgrade a while ago, but I was really hoping that a new 12-inch model would be announced. Instead, Apple chose to unveil the MacBook Air, which is a really pretty machine, but without enough guts for me. The hard drive wouldn't have been any bigger than the old one, and the lack of a CD/DVD drive would annoy me. So, we ordered a 13-inch MacBook, since my personal definition of a laptop requires that I be able to lift it with one hand from the coffee table :-) .

Apple makes it as easy as it could possibly be to upgrade. First, I backed up everything onto an external hard drive (not a required step, but since DH's last two machine "upgrades" have eaten various files belonging to me, I thought it would be a good idea). Next, I turned on the new computer, which walked me through the steps to connect it to the old laptop. Then, I had lunch and read a magazine for a while while the Migration Assistant copied everything over to the new computer. Desktop pictures, applications, all my files. My only complaint about Migration Assistant is the countdown. I expect a bit of inaccuracy, and it doesn't bother me when it takes a while at the beginning to decide if this is going to be a six-hour job or a one-hour job, but when the "less than a minute remaining" stays on my screen for 30 minutes, I find it to be really annoying.

This afternoon I played for the school musical again. The Oompa Loompas did their blocking for the first Oompa Loompa song, and the golden-ticket winners and their parents blocked their boat trip in the chocolate factory. Last night I finally got around to watching the DVD we'd bought of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (the original, with Gene Wilder). I'd forgotten a lot of the details--I can't remember how long it's been since I last saw it.

Tonight's dinner was an experiment, and it turned out quite well. I'm always looking for quick meals that can go in the crockpot, and I decided this week that I wanted chicken pot pie for dinner. After a little web surfing for ideas, I invented this recipe:

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Chicken Crockpot Pie

2 medium potatoes
1 medium onion
2–3 chicken breasts
1 stalk celery
1 family-size can cream of chicken soup
1 lb. frozen mixed vegetables
1 can large buttermilk biscuits

Peel and dice potatoes and onion. Dice celery and chicken. Put in crockpot with cream of chicken soup and 2/3 can water. Stir. Cook on low until chicken is completely cooked.

1–2 hours before serving, add frozen vegetables and stir.

15 minutes before serving, flatten biscuits to fit tops of bowls. Bake according to package directions until browned (approximately 10 minutes).

Ladle chicken mixture into bowls. Top each with browned biscuit.

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