Freude, Shoner Gotterfunken...zzzzzzz

Well, the concert is over, but I keep singing the fugue all night in my dreams! I wake up with Ode to Joy running through my brain! I love Beethoven! He was truly a genius!

This was definitely one of the greatest accomplishments in my life! My friend Farhana, who is also in the choir, said that for her it ranks right up there with giving birth, but I'm not willing to go quite that far! It was an incredible feeling, though, to be a part of something so wonderful, and it was a lot less painful than having a baby!

The performance was a huge success! It was a completely sold out show, and since the Stephen's Performing Arts Center holds about 1300 people that's pretty impressive! We performed the next night in Idaho Falls and that was pretty full, too, so the attendance was great!

I am on the far right, in front of the timpani, next to my friend Gwen Lloyd.

When we went to practice yesterday, Dr. Anderson told us that Kristine Ciesinski, the professional soprano who was originally scheduled to sing with us, was sitting in the audience that night. She told him after the show that she has performed as a soloist in Ode to Joy all over Europe and the United States and ours is the best choir she has ever heard perform it! I've had SO many people tell me how much they loved it! It's been fun hearing the reviews.

My own family's reviews were a little less glowing, but they all said they loved the part with the choir singing. The kids weren't as thrilled with the 2 hours of symphony music before our 20 minutes of singing! Here are Maren, Megan, Ellie, and Emma right before it started. Devin and Chris found the third movement very relaxing and confessed to sleeping a little during the music, but they say they woke up during the choral ending. I believe them because nobody could sleep through 150 voices singing fortissimo, not to mention the booming timpani! My friend, Gwen, had her cell phone with her on the stage and her daughter texted her immediately after we finished and said that the entire floor was shaking! It was awesome! I'm so glad I had the opportunity to do this, and I'm even more proud that I stuck with it even when it was scary (the tryout) and hard to learn (the entire piece)! Yeah me!