Henry had his very first piano recital today.
Unfortunately, I was out of town this week. His piano teacher announced at his lesson on Monday that there was a recital on Sunday and asked if Henry would participate. Uh, yeah, but a little more notice would have been appreciated...
So Leslie had the task of working with him to prepare him for his recital. Each evening, they would practice like it was the real thing..down to even pretending that others played and they sat quietly and listened and then clapped when the make-believe players were done. And then Henry would go and play his two pieces, complete with having to place his sheet music up on the piano and get himself positioned on the bench.
He chose to play the Theme from Starwars, and the Buggy Wuggy song from Little Einsteins (I can't remember the real name of it now).
So the recital is scheduled to start at 4, we arrive at 10 til, and guess what...no teacher. She trudges in at about 1 minute before 4, and then has to lug several carloads of stuff in, and then set up all of the equipment. Needless to say, we started about 30 minutes late. Ugh! The good news is that Henry was third to play. The bad news is that there were about 25 more kids after him that we had to sit politely and listen to.
When it was Henry's turn, he walked up put his music up and climbed onto the bench. Leslie and I were both about to get up because the bench was way too far away from the piano. But the teacher did run up there and move him closer. He paused and then began playing...Buggy Wuggy first and he played it pretty much flawlessly without looking at his fingers once. After he was done, he looked at the audience and smiled. Then he started in on Star Wars. He got a little distracted while playing and repeated a line, but I'm not sure that anyone noticed other than me. When he was done, he got up, took his music (and put it on top of his head), paused for a moment, and then bowed to the audience, he was just too cute for words. But he had such a look of self-satisfaction on his face. I was so proud of him. He did it! Then he ran down and back to me just giggling at himself. At the end of the program, they all received trophies, and this was another proud moment for Henry.
It was wonderful how supportive all of our friends and family were. Joyce, Grandma and Granddaddy, Aunt Courtney, Uncle John and Jack all came and listened to the entire concert just for the 5 minutes that Henry was on stage.
Afterwards, we went to dinner at Cafe Express. A good time was had by all!
