The First Annual Prewett Easter Program and After-Easter Concert Tour
by Rebecca Prewett
Based on the popularity of our family Christmas program and "concert tour" (no one covered their ears or flung tomatoes in our direction) we decided to inflict various friends and relations with an Easter version. In January, I began the process of selecting music, learning it, teaching it to my children, and putting together a program.
There were several things that I wanted to accomplish with our musical selections. Of most importance was that our music would tell the Resurrection story, beginning with Christ Himself and then taking the listener through the Crucifixion, the ultimate sacrifice of love, and ending with the glory of Christ rising from the dead. Musically, I wanted to showcase our various instruments and budding musicians. I wanted to include at least one recorder ensemble piece. And I wanted to present a variety of playing styles on the mountain dulcimer.
Our 5-year-old didn't want to be left out and clamored to learn the recorder. But his eyes glazed over during our music theory and note-reading lessons, so I let him noodle around on his own and learn from what the rest of us were doing. Soon he figured out his own "method"; he would watch someone play his part on a soprano recorder and copy the fingering. Once he'd learned a few notes this way and phrases of our first piece, he began surprising us by sounding out other little pieces.
This time we had rather nifty--looking programs, which I printed on card stock covers and music-themed stationery. We even had a title for our program and everything!
Our musical program, combined with an Easter Service from The Book of Family Prayer, was the central part of our family celebration of Easter, besides church that morning. We had put together the following and had spent months practicing our various pieces:
Our audience at home, which consisted of our youngest two children and two special guests, was enthusiastic and charitably overlooked our mistakes.
Early the following Thursday, we loaded up our "tour bus" (the trusty Goliath) and began our road trip. I was feeling like quite the dulcimist, since I had recently purchased a mint-condition McSpadden dulcimer and it had arrived the evening before. Here I was, with two dulcimers in my van!
This time we only performed our concert twice, once at my in-laws and a longer version in what we dubbed the "concert hall" (aka, my brother's living room). We were more "seasoned performers" than during our Christmas Concert Tour, but we also had a larger audience crammed into my brother's good-sized living room and we were dealing with what seemed to be outlandishly hot weather. Despite that, things went fairly well.
A cute thing happened during our concert at my brother's house. Jesse (the baby) escaped from the sibling watching him and, as Sam later described it, "rushed the stage and started tugging at the clothes of one of the musicians--just like a crazed fan at a rock concert!" (I suspected he just wanted to be picked up and nursed. But at least I can say that I now have a "groupie" of sorts.)
One of the more fun parts of the concert was what happened after the intermission:
During the jam session, we amplified my dulcimer for the first time, using a transducer and cabling to all sorts of mysterious equipment. After some experimentation, my brother got it to sound quite well. Then it wasn't overpowered by keyboard, bass guitar, etc. and I could actually hold my own.
All in all, we deemed our second concert tour an enjoyable success. Our audiences were too polite to dissuade us of this notion.
copyright 1997 by Rebecca Prewett
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