A Concert Weekend

Wow! I’m sorry I haven’t written anything, really I am. Did you miss me? (heads nodding up and down). Well, I missed you, too.

I was extremely busy this weekend and just didn’t have the time or energy to put down all that I was thinking, but I’ll try to let you know now.

Wednesday through Saturday I’ve been at the Conference Center every night, with rehearsals, dress rehearsals and concerts. I added it up, and with driving time, I spent almost 25 hours doing the bell thing this week. So, yes, I’m pretty tired.

But aside from absolutely tiring, it was wonderful and exilerating. Really! To be playing songs we love, with people who we love, is really amazing. Some of the songs were the same ones we did for our first concert in September of last year, and we’ve improved 100%. I wish I could say we played every song perfectly each time, but I can’t. We had a little disaster of sorts when a song completely fell apart on Saturday night–what in the world?– but somehow we picked it back up and carried on. I guess we needed something to laugh about.

Thursday night was a dress rehearsal for friends and families, and Ryan is awesome–he brought all 5 kids! When it was over and my bell friends saw Ryan sitting there with all the yahoos on his lap or around him, they all said, “Wow! Your kids were so good!” I guess we didn’t notice Ryan taking John outside for a time-out, nor did we know that John had somehow cut his head climbing under a chair (Ryan’s not sure how it happened, since John didn’t cry, but thinks it was from crawling under a chair–what?) and had a big bloody gash on his head when I went and saw them after the concert. But I thought the kids did great, and they lasted through the whole thing. Ryan, brave soul that he is, said, “Please don’t ask me to bring all the kids to one of these things ever again.” I won’t.

They were taping this one for BYU to use, so Saturday afternoon we did some more taping in the afternoon to clean up any areas where there were mistakes, and to get close ups, I guess. Imagine spending two hours on your feet playing bells, wearing black double sleeved dresses that do NOT breathe (and tuxes for the men) with the lights glaring on you while you play bells. And not just play, but play perfectly, if you don’t mind. And we’ll have these big cameras on big booms swooping around to capture your every move. Don’t look at that camera, you idiot! Look at the director! Oh, and smile like you are having the time of your life. What? You’ve got sweat dripping down your back? Well, you’d better smile about it. It was absolutely exhausting! My back was killing me, my dress was smelling like sweat (oh how pleasant!), my feet were killing me, and yes, I was smiling. Or I thought I was smiling. It probably looked like some contorted sneer by the time it was over, but I really tried to smile. I can hope that they got enough good tape that they can edit it to look like we played each song perfectly. In talking to the director after it was over, I asked him to please do his best to make us look and sound good (and 10 pounds skinnier, please.)

Finally, when he could tell that we were “fatigued”, we took a break to “powder” and get a drink, then came back for another half hour of taping. Thankfully they let us go, then. We got to relax, have dinner, let our hair down and have a little bit of relaxing time before our last concert. We’ve got two people leaving us to go on to bigger and better things (one’s joining the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, and one’s getting married and moving away to go to school), so we had a cake and cards for them. We will miss them.

All in all I am pleased with our performances. Yes, there were mistakes, yes there were rough spots, but I did my best. I made it through the really scary and hard songs without falling apart, and hopefully I did it with a smile on my face.