Jingle Bells Forever!

I promise this will be the last blip of me either singing, or playing piano or cello, or embroiled in some type of musical performance - for 2012, at least.

I enlisted my son Kim's assistance to capture a moment from tonight's holiday concert at Shuksan Middle School with the North Sound Community Orchestra. As you can see, he managed to find a very nice "soft focus" art setting which I like very much.

According to the critics (Kim, Rich) tonight's performance was at least as good as they expected it to be. I'll take that as "two thumbs up". I'm finding that the challenge for me, playing a mostly non-melodic part, is keeping count (especially when I have a long stretch of rests), coming in at the right time, and avoiding the dreaded unwanted solo. We ended the evening with the much-anticipated "Jingle Bells Forever", a rousing combination of patriotic fervor and holiday cheer, merging the tunes "Stars and Stripes Forever" with "Jingle Bells". I think it was a hit!