Wednesday, May 24, 2006

Proud Aunt

Today my niece Julie presented the first part of her Honors Projects to her schoolmates at our morning assembly. A cellist almost as long as she has been alive, Julie decided to do a recital for her 60-hour Honors Project. The actual recital is going to be next Tuesday evening, but she presented one of her pieces this morning as a kind of teaser. She was fabulous. No, really!

Only three other students in our school have even a passing acquaintance with string instruments. What classical music they know, for the most part they have heard in my English classes, so Julie's challenge this morning was to make Bach's Unaccompanied Suite #5 for cello interesting and exciting to an audience that had little or no experience with such music. She decided to use the opportunity to do a little teaching, providing the students with a copy of the piece so they could follow along. To their credit, they listened well, both to her explanation and her performance. Lauren (her mom)and I were beyond proud =)

3 comments:

Sunny said...

Good girl! I'm proud too. Does Lauren still play cello?

Patty said...

You should be proud ! What a wonderful blessing for her classmates to get to hear her play. Will your folks be there for her recital too ?

R. Aastrup said...

Lauren still plays, as does her husband (they met in an orchestra when we were still at GBA). Their son David also plays cello and the four will be playing a piece together in the recital. They played in church last week for the first time ever publicly...it was rich and beautiful. The pastor talked about it soothing the soul. That it did.

My folks will be down from Maine for the recital on Tuesday. I am eager to hear the whole thing. Julie is amazingly calm about it (at least she seems so). I'd be a nervous wreck!!!