Tonight was Kyle’s final concert with the Ulrich Intermediate School’s Symphony Orchestra.
It was held at Klein Oak High School in the auditorium. This was a first for an Ulrich concert. Usually they are in the cafeteria at the junior high. They have done them at The Centrum at the Cypress Creek Community Center as well. They were supposed to do this at Klein High School but their auditorium was torn up due to renovations that are occurring on campus currently. I am okay with doing it at Klein Oak High School in the auditorium as I know the students will all fit on the stage and there is at least decent seating for the parents. I would not jump straight to comfortable seating but it is not uncomfortable. The seats are at least padded. The acoustics in the auditorium are much nicer than in the cafeteria at Ulrich as well.
There was some discussion between Ms Marcelle Martin and some of the high school students before the concert began (stage right). This was a discussion about some of the announcements that were to be made during the concert. It is not uncommon for the high school students to help out at the junior high school concerts. It is a way for the high school students to give back to the place where they got their start. Andrew is the student in the black t-shirt looking down.
Andrew was selected to be the high school student to make the announcements that night. The announcements were from the Texas Future Music Educators (TFME) organization. He is not officially a member of TFME yet, but he was there to do his part as he is considering joining.
I am truly grateful for the public speaking training that my children have received over the years from having to speak in church and just have various leadership roles at church and in Scouting. One may not put a very heavy emphasis on these things but I can assure that these seemingly unimportant assignments can have a huge impact on their lives.
The skills that my boys have learned from simply getting in front of a microphone from the time they were 3 years old in the safe setting of their Primary Sharing Time started that foundation of learning to speak in front of large groups. I have come to appreciate those youth speaking assignments on Sunday when the children turn 12 years old. Even though this might be a big challenge for some of the youth in the church, it is teaching them vital skills for life. I know, I hate speaking in front of large groups. I want to throw up. It is horrible for me. Still they are learning to cope with and over come that fear starting when they are just young children.
Tonight I knew that Andrew was nervous getting up in front of an auditorium full of people, but I also knew that he could speak to them. It was obvious that he did not have a prepared speech in front of him and he was talking about something off the cuff of his sleeve, but he did just fine. I know with any doubt that he will continue to improve those skills as he is given opportunities to speak in large group settings.
Tuning. They do a stage change between each orchestra group. This is Kyle’s group on stage now – he is in Symphony Orchestra. They are doing one last “fine” tuning before actually doing their performance. This takes a couple of minutes, but it does help. This actually takes less time at the high school level because the high school students have learned how to tune their own instruments mostly by themselves.
Recognizing and honoring all of the 8th graders. They gave each of them a music related lapel type pin. Kyle is the 3rd one from the right end.
All of the Ulrich orchestra’s on the stage to perform together at one time. There are a lot of students in the orchestra program and it gets larger every year.
Ms. Marcelle Martin (Ulrich Orchestra Director) with Kyle Sansom.
It has been a great school year in the orchestra department. Kyle could have practiced harder and challenged himself more but do we know of any teenager that does not slack of somewhere?
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