I heard someone recently call this past month “Maycember,” and while I totally understand why, it is nothing compared to our Decembers. We’ve even had relatively nice weather. Sure, there are days in the nineties, but that’s normal for May in central Texas. What’s crazy is that we’ve had some cool mornings here and there and rain! We’re still in a drought and the lakes aren’t full, but they’re filling.
Since Ian spent this month finishing up his elementary school career, we’ve had some more events to attend at school. This started last month with his fine arts showcase. This month brought us MARE (Marine Activities Resources and Education) week. He and a class partner had to present horseshoe crabs. They had an informative poster and an interactive horseshoe crab game. The parents got to wander through the kids’ exhibits and ask questions and check out what they had made.
For Mother’s Day weekend, I started by having Sean purchase a picanha steak, which I sliced and trimmed into grillable slabs of meat. I made an outstanding chimichurri sauce and grilled 75% of the steaks over charcoal (Sean cooked Maya’s indoors, so she wouldn’t have to taste smoke).
The next morning, actual Mother’s Day, we went to La Cocina de Consuela for lunch and Sean made smothered pork chops for dinner. Sean and the kids cleaned up the dishes. For the amount of energy we all had, it seemed sufficient fuss was made.
And from that time forward, there wasn’t a week that went by without at least one musical activity. On March 11th, Maya’s middle school jazz band performed at Anderson High School. We saw pieces performed by the middle school, the high school, and even one where they performed together. It was a really good show, and Maya played all three of her instruments. (Jazz oboe, anyone?)
She was supposed to perform with the jazz band again on the 13th, but that overlapped with her final Soundwaves Symphony performance of the season. She had be get brave and talk to her jazz band director about missing the performance, and luckily he granted her permission! And that’s how we found ourselves down at the UT campus on the 13th, watching Maya and the youth orchestra she’s part of fill the Bates Recital Hall with sound.
The Mariachi para Todos group performed as well, including performing with the orchestra. It was a really neat show and a nice capstone to what has been an emotionally fraught but empowering year for Maya, musically.
The giant pipe organ looming large over the stage at Bates Recital hall is something to behold. It’s a Visser-Rowland organ. This crazy thing weights 24 tons and has 5,315 pipes. At the time of its installation in 1983, it was the largest tracker organ in the United States. We saw a sign imploring everyone to keep the room doors closed to help preserve the organ, presumably so the university control the temperature and humidity in the room.
Earlier that same day, Maya had a 7th grade field trip to Austin Parks and Pizza, and then she had a band field trip to Six Flags on the 15th. Missing those two A-days seemed to set her back a little on her school work, making the rest of the school year a scholastic nail-biter. But she eventually made it through.
While Maya was off having fun at Six Flags, we took Ian out to his favorite restaurant, Pappadeaux.
Lolli and Pop rolled into town on Saturday the 16th to partake of a particularly music-dense couple of days. Sunday morning, Ian had an artisan market performance. The scheduling was a little weird (he and Chris played while the market set up), but he did great! When he first started doing these market performances, he’d have a lot of false starts and would occasionally even abandon ship before a song was finished. There’s really none of that now. He plays confidently, carrying on when he makes little mistakes, even grooving to the music from time to time.
After his show, we had a delightful lunch at Buenos Aires Café, where Lolli and Pop found vegan things to eat, and the rest of us found lots of nice non-vegan things to eat! There was live music here too, if you can believe that. We almost couldn’t get away from it.
Then, that afternoon, Maya played in a piano recital that her teacher Ben had organized. Maya mostly performs with a group these days, so I think it’s especially rough on her nerves when she has to perform alone. As is her habit when she’s nervous, she turbo-played through her piece (Bagatelle, Op. 5, No. 9 by Alexander Tcherepnin), but luckily despite its complexity, she kept it together.
The next day, Sean and I took the day off work and hung out with Lolli and Pop while the kids headed off to school. It was nice to sit still, at least for a bit. We fetched Ian from an after school talent show audition (more on that shortly). Then that evening, after an early and hurried dinner, we went back to Anderson High School for Maya’s final band performance of the year. She and her peers were recognized for solo and ensemble work they’d done, and for a scale challenge they participate in each year called scale kwon do. Just like last year, Maya is a black belt. It was a night of lovely music and Maya’s final concert of the school year. She had to turn in her oboe for annual maintenance the next day.
That next weekend, Ian had a sleepover at a friend’s house, and so while he was having fun over there, we took Maya out to her favorite restaurant, Olive Garden.
On Memorial Day evening, like the fine upstanding parents that we are, we took the kids with us to watch Echo and the Bunnymen at ACL Moody Theater … on a school night. The supporting band was a jazz outfit called the Ryan Davis Trio who, thanks to their special guest musicians, never had only three musicians playing. The Bunnymen performed well, despite the fact that their lead singer’s voice is obviously going (perhaps gone). Plus I think every time Sean gets to see his favorite band of all time is a treat, especially when sharing it with the kids.
The last three days of school for Maya consisted of an Algebra final on Wednesday bookended by a whole lot of playing outside and having “movie time” or “game time.” I’m honestly not sure why these particular instructional hours were required, but who am I to judge.
Ian, for his last day of elementary school on the 28th, participated in a talent show. That morning before school and even the night before, he was kind of on edge. He wasn’t sure he’d practiced enough. He didn’t want to make a fool of himself in front of all the friends that he’s known since the beginning of elementary school. He was clearly having a case of nerves.
Maya bravely rode the bus that morning (the first time she’d done so all year, so it was new, and she was apprehensive) so we could go to school as early as they’d let us so we (Sean) could set up Ian’s guitar for his talent show entry. It was really hurried. We weren’t sure what we needed to do so we had to wait for instruction from his music teacher. The battery in the tuner died, so Sean was tuning the guitar by ear. We had a moment where we couldn’t find a critical cable (Ian hid it from us in one of the many pockets in his guitar case). The crowd started pouring in.
The awards and graduation ceremony that morning was broken up by talent show acts. We watched a few magic acts and dance numbers. It was all nice enough. Ian had prepared a scaled down version of Master of Puppets by Metallica. He loved Metallica before he had seen the fourth season of Stranger Things, and he was delighted to watch Eddie Munson’s epic guitar solo. So, when Ian got up there and started playing, he got recognition from the adults (because that was *our* music) and he got recognition from the kids (because Stranger Things). I think it was definitely one of the audience’s favorite performances. And even with his case of nerves, he killed it.
In the video, you will see Ian stepping on his pedal board. The idea was to use effects pedals to add distortion to the parts of the song that are meant to have a crunchier sound. Sean would tell you that Ian’s roadie (which is to say, Sean) messed up. In all the haste and mad problem solving during the 15-minute guitar setup, the flustered roadie hooked up the pedal board incorrectly, and so Ian had no crunch. For my part, I think the performance was fine regardless.
That afternoon, we came back and sweated it up out in the heat while the 5th graders did their “final walk” through the school. And just like that, dude’s a 6th grader.
That last notable thing we did in May was to head into the city to watch the Austin Symphony Orchestra present Video Games Live. Sean bought tickets for all four of us, even though Ian would tell you he hates symphonic music. Even the night of the event he moped around asking if he really had to go. Yep. Eye-roll. Sigh. Grumpily load into car.
Once the show got started though, Ian was locked in. The giant screen showed video game footage with live orchestral music. There’s honestly a diverse array of really interesting music to accompany video games. They showed lots of “cinematics” – not live gameplay, but pre-rendered cut scenes meant to provide background or progress the storyline in some way. I’m not a gamer *at all* but I found the show engaging and entertaining.
They interspersed the music with funny videos that had both the kids cracking up in their seats. Unlike “normal” symphony performances, they were encouraged to call out and cheer whenever they were moved to do so. (Maya, unfortunately, took it as license to yap through the whole show. We’ll work on it.) In the latter part of the show, its creator Tommy Tallarico augmented the orchestral music with electric guitar, much to Ian’s delight.
And for the past few days, the kids have been enjoying some much-needed downtime now that school’s out. Sean and I have been trying to finish final prep for our vacation next month, while enjoying a slightly less rigorous schedule, at least till summer camps start. And in the late summer, our two big kids will head to middle school together.
