I’m sorry, please forgive the gushing

I’ll be doing some more gushing next month, when Elder Brother has his junior recital, too, so please excuse the excess of motherly excitation, but Buster performed Stradella’s “Pieta Signore” this weekend for the judges and – for the third year in a row – received a score of 100%, with some really great remarks on the part of the adjudicator.

As I wrote during last year’s gush: in NY, a state that is very competitive musically, with so many talented kids, so many schools and a relatively small number of openings in statewide bands, orchestras and choruses (it’s a VERY big deal to be selected to participate in an “All State” group), when your kid does well at NYSSMA, it’s a happy day. NYSSMA judges are music educators with impeccable reputations, and they are not hand-holders. They’re there to give fair and just evaluations of your kid’s work, and the evaluations do land in their permanent records. So, if you have a kid who is seriously hoping to study music, like mine, it’s big. It’s very, very big.

I have to admit, I was a little worried, this year. Last year, Buster prepared Si, tra i ceppifor months and months, and had the advantage of listening to Bryn Terfel’s exquisite Italian to boost his diction. This year, he only worked on the Pieta for about 5 weeks, with no aural help on the diction (the only basso recording we could find was Dmitri Hvorostovsky’s and his Russian-accented Italian is a bit mushy – dangerous to listen to if you have a good ear). Thankfully he’s got a good teacher, and he pulled it off. He’s relieved, too.

Congrats, Buster! I apologize, but you will have to endure more gushing next month when Elder Brother has his junior recital, but I’ll try not to be too awful about it.