Lincolns Inn Field

We've been working for this day for weeks. Preparations have been extensive, from outfits, speeches, programme notes and of course her pieces.... But oh man.... boy, was she wonderful. 

Today she had the day off school as she had been invited to be one of just three soloists at the Awards for Young Musicians fundraising evening. We had a very civilised 10.45 train - though it ended up a slight panic as I thought it was from our train station and realised with not very long to go that it was in fact from the stop a half hour away... Oops. But we made it, and with time to park in our favourite free parking spot and buy coffee!

We arrived to London an hour before a friend we were meeting so we pottered round St Pancras. Katie managed free chocolate on three occasions. It was absolutely pouring down so our walk to the rehearsal venue wasn't much fun. Thankfully, we had an hour to dry off a bit and refuel her with brownies.

I haven't been to this venue before, it's called the Fidelio Orchestra Cafe and it's great. The cafe is beautiful and then downstairs there's a performance and rehearsal space. Katie's accompanist rehearsal was down in that. She did a beautiful job and patiently, knowledgeably worked through the bits the pair of them needed to. The two soloists who were at the rehearsal made quick friends with each other and chatted easily. We had to walk to the main venue but it had slowed to just persistent rain.

I haven't been to Lincolns Inn Field before, it really was quite an incredible sight. The main building was imposing in a Hogwarts way. The building of the Old Hall, where she was to perform, is apparently at least 500 years old. The hall itself is stunning. We arrived in good time for their sound checks, as the solo pianist was finishing up. However, we quite quickly realised that every chair in the room was very throne-like and not suitable for a little bassoonist! It took them an hour to find a not-throne-like chair for her that she could play on! The next challenge though was that she in fact was too small to sit her chair in the position they hoped as she couldn't see the accompanist! The only option left her about a foot away from the front row, so it was decided I should sit there so there weren't total strangers that close or in danger of knocking her music stand. She sounded very impressive during her sound check. 

We went and changed then she had a bit of time backstage with the others. Katie was first to perform. She always stuns me the way she has something set aside, regardless of how well prepared she is, that she can find on performance day to lift it even more. It was a beautiful performance. She especially relaxed after the opening of her first piece and just grew and grew into her performance. Her second piece had a lovely flourish to the end which she was keen to get an audience chuckle from. She was delighted to succeed at that. Her final piece is a fabulous piece of fun, clever finger work with lots of character. She smashed it and got a cheer as well as final applause! She didn't stop smiling tonight, and she put so much feeling into her playing. Such a good job. 

In an unusual occurance, the organisation had asked me to speak ("the highs and lows of raising a talented young musician") after her performance. Completely out of my comfort zone but I did... To my surprise, I had to pause for applause twice... once for simply saying "hello, I'm Karen and I'm Katie's mum"!

A large part of the evening is the time spent afterwards, talking to the patrons of the charity about the young musicians and the journey they're on. She's a bit less good at this at the moment, and was pretty tired, but she enjoyed the canapés as she stood trying very hard. I had to go mingle - and I did have some extremely exciting/interesting conversations including with the head of EMI, a trustee of the Royal College and the executive of London Philharmonic. She did so incredibly well and held out (just about) until it was OK to say goodbyes! We walked until we found a taxi and she was barely functioning in the car... she was asleep seconds after finishing her drink.