Kids and Concerts

The Belgian Wonder's nephew plays trombone in the wind ensemble at the small college he's attending this year. We drove up to hear him in concert last night, and it was quite nice. The student musicians performed beautifully, and a guest soloist played trumpet for several pieces.

All of our girls are taking piano lessons, and one is learning flute; another, clarinet. During the concert, they had a chance to see all of those instruments contributing to the overall beauty of the music (and The Boy got to see the constructor at work), while enjoying their Belgian cousin's skills at trombone.

After intermission we moved toward the back, which freed up the kids to be slightly more animated. One of the girls pretended to play the trumpet and The Boy bounced to the beat in his auditorium-style folding seat--the kind he can get folded up and stuck in like Lucille Ball in a Murphy Bed.

To introduce a jazzy version of "Leaning on the Everlasting Arms," the guest trumpeter stepped up to the mic and paraphrased the story in the gospels of the disciples reprimanding parents for bringing their children to Jesus for a blessing.

"People were bringing little children to Jesus," the soloist began, "and the disciples didn't think it was a good idea. I mean, children are sticky and sweaty and loud. Children don't know when to be quiet and they wiggle around and bother people. The disciples thought, 'We shouldn't have the children around Jesus. They're just going to distract and disrupt everything.' "

I started to get nervous. Was he going to point us out? Was he going to spotlight The Boy for being disruptive? After all, The Boy might have stood out at the beginning. He'd been mesmerized by those first songs, swaying his upper body and making slow, fluid hand motions something like a Hawaiian hula dancer. He might have been a little distracting.

The soloist continued, "But when Jesus heard that, he was indignant and said, 'You bring those children to me. Let the children come to me. That's how we receive the kingdom.' That's what we need to be like--like little children, leaning on our Father."

Whew! No mention of our presence. But The Boy was listening to the whole story. When the trumpeter finished speaking and started to play the song, The Boy looked up at me and asked, "Was that a true story?"

"Yes," I whispered. "It's a story in the Bible about Jesus."

He nodded and made a "how about that" face. He was surprised. So I leaned over and added in a whisper, "Jesus really liked children." He was already sucking on his fingers. It was late and he was tired, so he just nodded again.

The concert ended with a jazzed up version of "Joshua Fought the Battle of Jericho," during which one of the older girls leaned over and informed me that this was a Veggie Tales song. When it was over, the people--mostly parents of the student musicians--applauded long and enthusiastically. The students didn't get up and leave the stage right away, the parents kept clapping, and the soloist had exited but then came back out.

"What's happening?" our youngest girl asked.

I wasn't sure, so I speculated. "Well, if you clap really hard, sometimes they'll come back out and do another song. It's called an encore." The soloist looked like he might be preparing for another song. The students were shuffling music on their stands.

Clapping continued. The students started standing up with their instruments in one hand and music gathered up in the other, glancing out at the audience sheepishly, not sure what to do. The soloist looked out, grinned and kind of shrugged. A student tapped a final ker-thump on his drum and everyone laughed and stopped clapping. The auditorium lights finally came on.

"Are they going to play another song?" our girl asked.

"I don't think so," I answered. "It looks like it's over. I guess there's no encore after all."

"Too bad," she said while zipping up her coat. "I guess we didn't clap hard enough."