The Music Competition

This evening James, Grandma and I went to Ally's school music competition. The standard was very high; there were three categories - solo performance grades four to five, and six to eight, and open ensemble class. Ally's jazz quartet were in the ensemble category. Last year the quartet gave a rather lacklustre performance of "Pirates of the Caribbean" in the contest, which they had the good grace to laugh about. However this year they really shone with "Lassus Saxophone" and they came first in their category! We were all delighted and when Ally and his friends looked round to see where I was I gave them a big victory salute from the balcony! I felt I should do this because last year I jokingly made a cut throat gesture to indicate that I didn't think it had gone well, which they all found amusing. All of the performances were really good and my personal favourite was a young violinist playing "Millionaire's Hoedown" by Clebanoff which was amazing. However the overall winner was clearly the best; a girl who played Prelude Op 23 No 4 by Rachmaninov; I don't know much about music but I don't think a professional musician could have played it better. So it was a fantastic evening. Alasdair said that he is so pleased at winning in his 6th year, he was all smiles and let me hug and kiss him.