Children's Concert

I played three children’s concerts yesterday with a community orchestra in a neighboring city (if you can call 90 miles one way of rural driving "neighboring"). I had a proud moment seeing my own kids in the audience and waving at them from the stage before the concert started, just like my parents did with me. It was fun to see how the concertgoers reacted to the same things during the instrument demonstrations at all three concerts—the size of the tuba, the harp playing “When I Wish Upon a Star”, the cello that started with "The Swan" and broke into a little bit of Hendrix-inspired headbanging (that was MY husband, forever promoting the awesomeness of his chosen instrument).

One of the works we performed was “Animal Ditties V for Orchestra” by Anthony Plog. It featured seven poems by Ogden Nash, “The Porpoise”, “The Dog”, “The Ant”, “The Centipede”, “The Chipmunk”, “The Mule” and “The Rhinoceros”, read by a narrator and set to music. I thought the music highlighted the poems nicely—clever, jazzy, colorful, miniature but not precious. Animal pictures were projected on either side of the stage to accompany the words and music, and here, too the audience had strong reactions to the same things. The dog (“Awwww!”) and the centipede (“Eeewww!”) were not too surprising. But the ant also got a strong reaction, and the favorite was a surprise to me—the rhinoceros.  Apparently they're just plain cool.

Here's a link to the poem