West City Youth Concert Band

Switching from athletics to music, for the past five days the girls have been fulltime involved in band camp.

Back in December, Mulan and Miya signed up for the West City Youth Concert Band camp.  It's not really a camp, as they don't stay overnight.  But it was a busy four full days of music-making (Tuesday until last night).

Since it's a concert band, Mulan played her flute (rather than recorder or cello, which are probably her first and second instruments).  But that was ideal, as she hasn't had much chance to play flute lately and it was nice to get back into it again.  Miya played her clarinet.

They sent us the music while we were away on holiday (asking the kids to get familiar with it before the camp started).  That meant that when we got back last Sunday evening Mulan and Miya had just over a day to try out the pieces.  And they did amazingly well to get themselves sorted, working on the pieces together for most of the time.

So, from Tuesday until yesterday my job was simply to drive the girls out to West Auckland (about 25 min away) each morning and then pick them up each afternoon.  I wasn't allowed to know too many details until the final concert last night at 7pm.

(Mulan is on the left with the flutes, while Miya is on the right with the clarinets.)

And wow, the concert was very impressive and thoroughly enjoyable.  Alongside playing several pieces together, the musicians divided into three groups (marching, composition and jazz) and performed those.  Mulan and Miya both chose the marching group.  Marching and playing at the same time is surprisingly challenging to coordinate, and it was a great introduction for them.  At the concert we watched a pre-recorded video of them doing some synchronised movements while playing.

Here's one of the pieces the band played, The Great Locomotive Chase.

We're now looking into whether it's possible for the girls to join the Youth Band itself this year.