Children's Day Concert

We've been having a little trouble with our VPN lately so I haven't been able to post for a while. I'm going to post my journal entry about our big Children's Day concert as a little catch-up!

We finally had our first (and only) concert out here in China!!

We were asked back in March if we would be able to perform two of the songs that we’ve been teaching the kids for this concert. We had very eagerly agreed (especially because we had thought we’d be doing several concerts while we were here). We decided to sing the “Show Me the Way” that Mitch had arranged and “Seize the Day” from Newsies. With three months to prepare two songs it wasn’t any surprise that come the end of May we all felt very comfortable with the music. These past few days were spent rehearsing in the concert hall and it was nice to have the whole choir sing together instead of how it normally is in class half at a time. It was an interesting process trying to communicate with everyone involved in the process. We communicated best with a teacher named Hannah because she speaks Russian very well. So when we wanted mics turned up or whatever Mitch would speak to Hannah. Unfortunately her native language is Mongolian and her Chinese is just as pathetic as ours is so then she would have to talk to someone else who understood Mongolian and Chinese and then he would finally tell the tech guy what we wanted!

After a full day of rehearsals we received a phone call from Hannah who sounded very stressed out. It turned out that because some important political people were coming they were trying to request that the concert be only one hour long. Now I had just been thinking about what a nice length this concert was at one hour and thirty minutes. Most of the other concerts that we’ve been to here have stretched on to the three hour mark. So at the last minute they were going to try and cut some numbers. This was no easy task. Every number in the program except choir pieces and the two dance numbers were songs that the kids had actually auditioned with to be put in the concert. They had worked so hard and now Hannah was having to cut several of them. She asked us to pick one of our songs to cut. While not a happy decision it was a fairly simple one. We chose to cut “Seize the Day” the song I was conducting. We had several reasons but the main one was that “Show Me the Way” had soloists in it one of whom had broken his foot several weeks earlier and had come from the hospital just so that he could be there to sing his solo. Despite my understanding of the situation I was still upset. We have been in China for almost a year now and this was going to be our only chance to be onstage with these kids and show what we’ve been working on! Fortunately I have a wonderfully persistent and persuasive husband. He convinced them to keep my song in for the dress rehearsal and then if after that it was still too long then they could cut it. They didn’t cut it!

All in all it was a great evening. The kids did a great job and had a good time. Both Mitch and I had a wonderfully feeling of accomplishment. It was so great to get to perform with these wonderful and talented kids. Apparently we shook hands with the President of Inner Mongolia that night but for me the highlight of the evening was being onstage with those kids! I will miss them when we come home.