Finishing Strong.

This week brought some challenges, but we finished the week strong...with some of the best simple pleasures in life: friends, berry picking and roses.

The Rest of the Story: Phoenix Concert

 

It was a LONG concert.  I wanted to capture a sampling of music for posterity purposes, but found myself unwilling to tape and post a good amount of the material presented.  It was, um, well, just not kosher.  I'll leave it at that.  Thankful for the opportunity, but it was uncomfortable in several ways.  I did tape a handful of songs from the concert, and have posted them below.  The closing number is the one in which the NCC appeared for a super short time.

Here is the opening number:

Here is one piece with a really strong vocalist (they all were really good, but this gal had a powerful voice):



Here is another one with a guitar solo:



And then, a love song:

Here is the closing number...it's a long one, NCC performs at 5:25.

Phoenix Concert, 2012

One of the things that we've had on our schedule for about a month now is a guest appearance at a Phoenix Ensemble concert at Massey Auditorium at Belmont here in Nashville.  We didn't know hardly anything when we said "yes" to this opportunity...we just thought, hey, it's another opportunity for the girls to sing and make music.  Then, details about the performance started to trickle in...first, it was that they would be singing the chorus to "Thunderdome" (yes, a la Tina Turner in Mad Max).  Then, we were told they were to dress as feral children.  This, of course, THRILLED my feral children, as this was not just an opportunity to SING, but also to DRESS UP and MAKE BELIEVE.   Last, at the rehearsal no less, they were given another chorus to a Carly Simon song to quickly memorize and perform for the finale.  Needless to say, we are learning to roll with the punches.  Anyhow, here is how the whole thing went down...in pictures: 

Rehearsal on Wednesday night (sorry, bad camera phone):

Then, the afternoon of the performance, hair is "done" and costumes are donned:

 Then, it's off to Belmont, where grease paint is added to the mix to give that postapocalyptic-feral-child look to the choristers:

 After this, we were left to wait in the auditorium for their cue.  It was at this point that we took a look at the concert program and thought, um, what is this we've gotten our children into:

Then, the show started.  Wow. What an experience.  Honestly, we just felt like old fuddy duddies--we pondered how these kids were young enough to be our kids, and if they were our kids, we'd tell them to put on some more clothes, choose more wholesome songs with understandable lyrics, and turn down the music!!  LOL  But, I digress...they all were quite talented. 

Then, finally, one hour into the show and shortly after my ears stopped bleeding, the NCC made their appearance.  First, Belle came onto the stage with a handful of other choristers to sit at the feet of the soloist...who had just been carried in on a lounge/bed thingy.  Then, all of the rest of the choristers rushed to their side of the stage to sing the chorus, "We don't need another hero, we just want to know the way home.  All we want is life beyond...Thunderdome!", then they went straight into "True Colors".   Here is how that went down:

 Then, the closing number which included a short chorus from the NCC choristers:

 A standing ovation for all involved:

 And finally, posing with dear friend Caroline after the whole thing was over:

 And yes, here is what tells the story best--the video with the girls' performance. I'll post another time with all the remainder of the video "snippets" of the evening.  But for now, the highlight were the two songs from NCC: