"Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Tells Your Story?"

In July, the long-awaited, much anticipated national touring Hamilton production came to town. I had bought tickets back in December, knowing that we really SHOULD see it but not really understanding what an amazing show it would be. I wondered if it would really live up to the hype and accolades. 

I knew the lyrics contained the story, so I started listening to the soundtrack in January and from the very first listen, I was completely drawn in. I spend a lot of time working on class stuff in my craft room, and the Hamilton soundtrack has become the soundtrack to much of it. 

  I find it helpful to read a plot summary and listen to a soundtrack before seeing any musical, but it's even more important with Hamilton. A few of the numbers are rapped, or at least spoken very quickly, so it's useful to understand the lyrics before you go. In Hamilton, the story is advanced entirely through music, so if you don't understand the words, you're bound to lose details.

Knowing the soundtrack so well, I was actually a little nervous about seeing the show, wondering if it would hold up to my expectations. And of course, the live show blew me away. The actors are not required, nor do they necessarily try, to stay true to the original soundtrack, and I loved the nuanced performances of now-familiar songs.

The first time Spouse and I saw the show, the actor playing Hamilton was not the principal but he did an amazing job. The next time I went, the principal actor playing Hamilton was on and to my amazement, he somehow had the effect of elevating the production that much more with his nuanced portrayal of the main character.

 

The second time, I went alone (found a great deal on a single ticket!) and was seated just 4 rows back from the stage. If you're ever able to do so, I highly recommend seeing a show very close just once. My daughter and I once saw Phantom even closer than this. It brings a completely different perspective when you can see facial expressions, costume details, and even activity in the wings.

 

I am so glad I went a second time as I was able to take in even more of this incredible performance. It was fun to see how a slightly different mix of actors brought their own talents to the production.

 I learned that the cast does a stage door autograph signing immediately after the show so I decided to check it out, just to see what the cast looks like out of costume. When they first started coming out of the stage door, I didn't recognize them. They look like "regular people" -- which of course, they are! They were all very gracious to the crowd, taking time for pictures and autographs.

 

 I have been fortunate to see a lot of Broadway/touring shows, some more than once, because our local Civic Center does a great job of bringing them to town. My expectations are high, and I was ready to compare the show with Wicked, The Lion King, and my all-time favorite, Phantom of the Opera. But Hamilton truly blew them all away (did you catch the Hamilton reference there?). It's an expensive show to see, but it's worth every penny and then some. And the next chance I have to see it, you can be sure I'll be going!

 

I have heard a few people say they aren't interested in seeing this show because "so much" of it is rapped. That's actually not true, and I think you'd be surprised at how the show actually brings out the humanity of our nation's founders. Lin Manuel Miranda's show portrays the messy nature of how our country was built and the degree to which our founders tried to get it right -- so they could leave a legacy to their own children. And he makes the story accessible by telling it in modern-day language with actors who reflect the diversity of America today.

One of the central themes of the show is this: "Who lives, who dies, who tells your story?"  From the first time I listened to Hamilton, I was drawn in to this theme. Hamilton has a sense of urgency in all he does, working non-stop because he fears he won't have enough time to accomplish his goals in life. And sadly, this turns out to be true. Eliza, his wife, becomes the one who ultimately keeps his legacy alive and tells his story.

 

As an avid scrapbooker/memory-keeper (and now researcher of my family history), the notion of "telling your story" completely resonates with me. It's the reason why I'm spending so much time trying to put together the pieces of my childhood. It's why I'm interested in those who came before me -- they're part of my story, too. And it's why I am focused on leaving completed scrapbooks and stories -- OUR stories -- to our daughter. 

Thanks to Hamilton, I'm more determined than ever to make that happen. 

jp 

P.S. Have you seen Hamilton? What did you think? Which themes resonated with you?

End of the run

I've given this a lot of thought, and I've concluded that the hardest part of the senior year is the end of activities which have been significant in the life of your student. It's hard for both the student and the parent.

And of course, the year is full of endings. I thought that the end of marching band last fall might kill me (and it nearly did). Then came the end of mock trial, show choir, chamber choir, and wind symphony. I've learned to keep a supply of Kleenex with me at all times.

And now comes the end of jazz band. We were lucky because this year our band's season was more than a month longer than usual, so we had many more opportunities to listen to this exceptional group of kids.

This band has had an incredible year, capped by winning the Iowa Jazz Championships in April. This past week, the kids played at the inaugural Jazz Education Network conference in St. Louis, an international gathering of jazz educators and performers. It was a tremendous honor to be selected to play at this event from the hundreds of high school bands who applied. Several parents traveled with the band for one final performance. The band stacked up quite well against incredibly talented high school and college groups from around the country. We knew our kids were great, but their performance at this conference really confirmed it.

This performance marked the end of the run for our jazz band. It was also the last "ending" of the senior year and for that, I'm thankful.

These endings are tough. I'm ready for some beginnings.

State Champs!

Our high school jazz ensemble competed in the Iowa State Jazz Championships yesterday against top bands from around the state. Two bands are chosen from each class to participate in finals. The 4A class is extremely competitive, so we were ecstatic that our band made finals for the first time in our school's history!

But we were even more ecstatic when our band won last night! What a thrill for the kids, our director, and for the entire music program in our district.

As our senior year begins to wind down, I am feeling so grateful for the many opportunities our daughter has had to participate in a rich variety of instrumental and vocal music activities throughout her school years, and for the many fine directors who have provided her with such a great musical foundation.

What an amazing ride it has been!

All good things must come to an end...

...Show choir being one of them. Today is the final performance for our show choirs, and the very last show for our seniors. It's the end of an activity that has been near and dear to my heart for many years. Anyone close to show choir will tell you that there is nothing like it.

In honor of the end of the season, here's a page I finished up recently about 8th grade show choir. Those same kids are graduating this year. So much has happened since those middle school days, yet it feels like it all passed in the blink of an eye. Sequins, hair spray, wardrobe malfunctions, trophies, long bus rides, blizzards, and tears...We've experienced it all and more!

So congratulations to all the kids who are finishing their show choir careers today. You should be very proud of what you've learned and how you've entertained us for so many years.

And even though your time in show choir is ending, I'm sure that many of you will go on to use your talents in musical theater, community plays, and more. And one day, you can sit in the audience as your son or daughter takes the stage for the first time.

You will be the perfect fan.

Crazy, continued...

Things continue to be crazy busy around here due to the fact that a certain graduating senior is in da house. In the midst of all the college audition/acceptance/decision issues, our show choir just returned from a trip to a national competition in Nashville. The kids performed on the stage of the Grand Ole Opry. What a treat to perform in such a great facility!

Show choirs from several states (as far away as California) competed and our group came in fifth! This was a big thrill since our kids didn’t even expect to make it to the final round of competition. We also won best show band (YAY, band!) and our two female soloists each received outstanding vocalist awards. The level of talent at this competition was really unbelievable. It was an outstanding end to the show choir season.

This photo is courtesy of a friend who was sitting in the balcony. The circular area on the stage floor was taken from the original Grand Ole Opry stage.

This photo of my daughter and her buddy was taken after the awards ceremony.

 
So show choir is ending, but somehow life goes on! Notably, our Mock Trial team is headed to state competition this week. This is a first for Team Tinselfrog. (Yes, the team is partly named after our cat, Tinsel. More on that some other day...)

Meanwhile, I’m limping along with the scrapbooking. Here’s a recent layout about Iowa State Honor Choir which was held this past February.

My daughter sang in this choir for the second year, and she also had the opportunity to play congas on one song. This was a neat way for her to use both her vocal and percussion skills.

(Almost) Wordless Wednesday

We've trained her well. :-)

It's Madrigal week!

It's the beginning of the holiday season and time for our high school's 30th annual Madrigal Feaste. It is a huge undertaking for our choir directors, our vocal students, and a host of volunteer parents. Attending the Madrigal production is a great opportunity for members of our community to enjoy the many talents of our students.

This is our daughter's last year in the Madrigal production and she has the honor of playing the role of the queen. (I had to laugh when members of the royal court decided to name her Queen Lily, which just HAPPENS to be the name of one of our kitties.)

Having helped with decorations and watched the rehearsals, I cannot wait to attend the production. It's a beautiful evening filled with song and dance and the perfect way to start the holiday season.

And we're off! Another show choir season begins!

Our high school show choirs are in full rehearsal mode, preparing for the official start of the competitive season in January. This evening, we had the opportunity to attend an open rehearsal to see how the shows are coming together. At open rehearsals, the students perform in the practice clothes, without props, and do only a portion of their show.



If you're not familiar with show choir, it is a highly competitive activity in which students sing and dance as a group. Students audition to be part of show choirs, which usually include 40-60 members. A typical choir will do four to six songs with a couple of costume changes during a show, including high-energy pieces, a ballad, an all-male or all-female number, or a musical theatre piece.

Show choirs compete against each other at invitationals, which have all the excitement and energy of a sporting event plus significant amounts of aerosol hairspray. :-)

While I'm a band mom at heart, I have to admit that I love watching show choir, too. I've sobbed through more show choir ballads than I can count. A top notch show choir is unbelievably fun to watch.

This year, our competitive season will take us to several invitationals, capped by a trip to Nashville to compete in a national competition at the Grand Ole Opry. You can bet I'll be at every one of them, Kleenex in hand.

A BIG Event

Last night was the annual Iowa All-State Music Festival, featuring the All-State Band, Orchestra, and Chorus. Back in October, over 1,000 students were selected by audition from around the state to participate. According to the program, these students represent the top 1% of Iowa music students.

Last year, our daughter was selected to play percussion in the All-State Band. I have to admit that we were pretty excited about that because percussion is a very difficult section to make. Soon after the festival last year, she announced that she planned to audition for the All-State Chorus this year. She prides herself in being a well-rounded musician and wanted to see if she could rise to the challenge. And sure enough, she did!



Last night we attended a wonderful concert at Iowa State University's Hilton Coliseum. Instead of looking for her at the back of the band, we had to pick her out 601 vocal students in a sea of multi-colored choir robes!

We're very happy that she has had the unique opportunity to be part of the both the band and the choir. Both were very different kinds of learning experiences and will serve her well in the future.

If you're in Iowa, be sure to watch the program on IPTV, Thanksgiving evening at 7:00 pm. More information can be found at IPTV.

End of the season

Yesterday, our marching band performed in the state marching contest and an evening competition, taking first place and the drumline caption award .

All in all, it was a good end to the season. All marching band seasons are memorable, but this one brought some special challenges. This fall, our kids have played in freezing temperatures, rain, wind, and snow. They bought hand warmers in bulk and became well-acquainted with Toasty Toes. They even wore garbage bags for the homecoming show because the weather was so miserable.

This season, the H1N1 virus also showed up and wreaked havoc on our band, taking out 18 kids last Saturday, the day of our biggest competition. Yet those who remained rose to the challenge and delivered a second-place finish in spite of difficult odds and horrendous weather conditions.

The season is officially over, but those who have been in marching band know that it never really leaves you. Many of these kids will go on to march in college. Some may become music educators. And some may have a child of their own one day who decides to play an instrument.

And their eyes will light up as they tell that young child about their altogether wonderful days in marching band. Those vivid memories become the spark that ignites the torch as it is passed from one generation to the next.

Thanks, Marching Dragons. Pass it on.

Marching Season Begins

Tonight marked the first official performance of our marching band. The band is off to a great start. This season's show has a James Bond theme and, based on how it has come together so far, it has the potential for being even better than last year's Lion King show.

I'm looking forward to watching the show progress over the next few weeks. I will NOT think about this being my daughter's senior year. I will NOT dwell on the fact that this is her final high school marching band season. I will NOT think about it. Nope, not even one little bit.

Well, maybe just a tiny bit. *sniff*

Layout: Valleyfest

One of the reasons we scrapbook is to relive our memories. As I've been working on marching band layouts from last season, I've certainly had the opportunity to do just that. Our marching band had a great season last year and, in looking through these photos, the memories of all the performances came flooding back.



This particular competition marked the high point of the season. Since I already have many pages of the band in performance, I wanted to capture some of the other aspects of marching band season on this layout, especially the emotions of winning a big competition. So I included the text of an e-mail from our band director which was sent after the kids returned home that night. You can feel his excitement about the band's achievements and see it in the faces pictured here!

My advice to anyone reading this is to be sure to capture not only the FACTS of a particular event, but also the FEELINGS that accompanied it. Recording your feelings will help you relive your memories in years to come...which is really what scrapbooking is all about!

Layout: Remedy Drive concert

Here's a layout about the Remedy Drive concert my daughter attended last fall. Remedy Drive is a contemporary rock band that played at our church last fall.

I am happy that she took a camera along to the concert. You can tell that she's the daughter of a scrapbooker, because she took a picture of the screen with the band's name, plus a variety of distance and close photos. *sigh* I must be raising her right! Because of the lighting, the pictures aren't super but by cutting them down, they work as a whole and don't look bad at all.

You can see the blank area is ready for her journaling. She's out of town for the week and when she gets home, she'll be happy to see that I have a stack of layouts ready for her stories!

Layout: Parade

Here's a layout I finished up recently showing pictures of our drumline participating in a parade earlier this summer.



Our fall marching band show has a James Bond theme, so our drumline proudly sported their new 007 "You Only Drum Once" shirts for this occasion.

As soon as I can catch my daughter, I'll have her add the journaling!

Layout: Iowa Jazz Championships

Here's a layout I finished up last week about the Iowa Jazz Championships, with a little help from my daughter. It's a pretty big deal for a jazz band to qualify for this state-wide event. Her band took fifth place this year.

I've been looking forward to working with this particular set of photos. The lighting on stage was great and the blue/gold spotlights made for an interesting vertical design element.

I wanted the look of this layout to be sleek and contemporary to reflect the band's music, so I kept the design very simple (no surprise there!), using strong horizontal lines to balance the vertical spotlight stripes. I enlarged two of my favorite photos, then I had Daughter choose the others.

I also asked her to write the journaling. As often as possible, I like to have her tell the story for her events. In years to come, she'll be glad she took the time to write down her own memories. I think we make a pretty good scrapbooking team! :-)

Coldplay

Here are a few pics from Spouse's Blackberry taken during Friday evening's Coldplay concert. Great show, even from the cheap seats.

A highlight of the evening was when the group trekked all the way to the back of the arena and performed a three-song set in the midst of the crowd.

I loved everything they played, but being a fan of their earlier work, I would have liked to have also heard more from the older albums. Of course, that would have made for a much longer concert, but that would have been fine by me. :-)

At the risk of repeating myself...

...I thought I'd post another collage layout, this time including a collage with a vertical orientation.

As you've probably guessed, I have a ton of show choir layouts to make for this season alone. Once again, a Picasa collage came to my rescue! My daughter had taken several pictures on the bus ride to this show choir invitational, so I combined some of our favorites into the collage on the left page. (Notice how this scrapbooker's daughter took pictures of the backs of their sweatshirts showing the choir names? *sigh* She makes her mommy proud! I'm obviously raising her right! lol)



Anyway, I "faked" a collage on the right page using some backstage photos I snapped as the girls were getting ready for the competition. (I just matted the four pictures on a big piece of white cardstock using the same margins as in the real collage.) I pushed both collages together at the center of the layout to create a continuous flow from page to page. Finally, I added strips of black with rounded outside corners and red subtitles to visually tie the two pages together.

Honor choir layout

Here's another very simple layout of our daughter's recent performance in an honor choir. This layout is based on a design from last fall's online class by Cathy Zielske at Big Picture Scrapbooking. I've used this design a couple of times. It's a good one for multiple photos. I simplified it a bit with this particular set.

Old product alert: The black stars are from an older (hoarded) Project Essentials cardstock sticker set by Imagination Project, now (sadly) out of business.

Another layout to share

Here's another layout I finished up recently using photos of our daughter's show choir at their open dress rehearsal back in January, just before the competitive season started. They've attended several big events this winter, so I have NUMEROUS show choir layouts to make!

This design is actually based on a sketch from Cathy Zielske's Big Picture Scrapbooking online class, Design Your Life, which ended back in December. The paper is hoarded Ki Memories from my extensive Ki stash. Notice that I used just a tiny bit. Yep, still hoarding. :-)

Honor Choir Performance

Over the past couple of days, our daughter participated in an honor choir event at Iowa State University. The choir was comprised of approximately 105 high school students from across Iowa who auditioned in November. It was a great opportunity to work with an accomplished director and musicians from other schools.

Last evening, we had the pleasure of attending the group's concert. It was a fine performance by a group of outstanding young vocal students. For their final selection, the group performed the very challenging spiritual "The Battle of Jericho". Our daughter had sung this piece previously and it's one of our favorites.

If you have a moment, I hope you'll take a few minutes to listen to this great performance!