Johannah's Chamber Group

This has been such an exciting three weeks for Johannah. She went into this with all the anticipation of hearing about Interlochen from her siblings for the last two years. She was determined to "grab the bull by the horns" and make the most of her Interlochen experience. By everything that I see, she has. Yay! She has lots of friends, she knows the campus like the back of her hand, and she's stepped up as a leader.

Johannah has never had any experience with chamber music--playing music in a small group--so I wondered what would happen. With so many violinists attending Interlochen, many of them don't get the small group experience, but instead play in violin ensembles with 12-16 violins. However, violists are rare, especially at the Intermediate level. I think, in total, there were only 8 or 9 violists, but around 60 violinists. Needless to say, the violists get a lot of opportunities to play!

I showed up today for Johannah's chamber music recital. When I took their group photo yesterday, they seemed like a very mixed group of kids--Johannah is responsible for the music of the group and friendly, her good friend (2nd violin) is very quiet, the 1st violinist (from Peru) didn't say two words (I do sympathize, however, remembering what it's like to live in a foreign land), and the cellist, Alex, is hilarious, outgoing and completely irresponsible, but nobody care because he's so cute. I honestly didn't know what to expect music-wise, because she hasn't told me much. Turns out, they were playing a movement from a Mendelssohn string quartet. Awesome! I am a strong believer in concert etiquette, so for me to take any video is highly rare. However, I wanted to capture just a few seconds of her playing with her group (the violinists were behind the guy sitting in front of me and not on camera).