Music geek

One of my piano students brought me an entire bag of "The Etude" magazine.  The published dates for the magazines in my possession range anywhere from 1903 to 1951.  They have a church musician section that I'm pretty fascinated with reading, as well as checking out some of the actual compositions they have printed directly in the magazine, the advertisements, and all of the music schools they have listed.  Just amazing!  My favorite cover, so far, is the one from 1918, during WWI.  We totally need a call back to the arts.  Somewhere along the line, we lost the importance of the arts in our lives.  I'm totally geeking out over this stuff, but I love it!

 "Music will help us win the war.  Music in our homes keeps courage in our hearts."  -September 1918

What does this mean?

I had my second children's choir rehearsal today. Last week, 84 kids (!!!) showed up to see what my children's choir is all about. Long story short, it's a group of 4th - 6th graders who get together once a week to practice, and then they sing at church once a month. Usually, I end up with less kids than I started with (thankfully!), but today, I had 96 little children sign in (with more planning to come next week). AH!

This could mean several things:
1. The kids like me
2. They don't like me, but they like the occasional treats I bring for a job well-done
3. They think coming to church for an hour after school is cool
4. They like our accompanist, Mrs. Beckett, and like to listen to her tickle those ivories
5. I'm going to pull my hair out
6. I contemplate jumping off the balcony
7. They actually like singing....could it be?

If #7 is the answer, then I am doing my job. My entire goal when I took over the children's choir was just to help the kids understand how fun singing can be. Once they love singing, and have fun doing it, it's easy to teach them parts, songs in different languages, etc. They are loud and talk entirely too much (I'm working on that!), but when they sing, it's just like a bunch of little angels singing.....too bad their director is soon to be hairless, and broken-legged from a great leap of faith!