Benjamin's Guitar Recital...

On Thursday night, 1/29/09, Benjamin had his first guitar performance. It was a three minute slot that students in grades 3 through 5 town wide were eligible to participate in. A form went home in the backpacks at the beginning of December asking if our child takes music lessons outside of school and would like to perform in a little concert. I sat Benjamin down and asked him if he would like to, explaining that if he committed to it, then he had to practice every day until the concert. Once he said yes, I called up our Guitar Teacher Extraordinaire, Uncle Jeff, and asked for Emergency Guitar Lessons. Benjamin had ceased having lessons in the few months prior to our receiving the concert notice, so if he were going to do this, he would need to brush up on his playing. He decided to play "Happy Birthday" and the Theme from Jaws. On the day before the concert, he had his final lesson. Uncle Jeff actually started teaching Ben a new song, that is, the Theme from Star Wars (which he is REALLY into these days!). He wanted to perform it, but we didn't think he was quite ready to do that one in public. About a week before the concert, he was giving me a hard time about practicing daily and started to say that he didn't want to do it. It was not because he was nervous though. It was because he would rather play on the computer at the time. I reminded him of his commitment and he was fine. He is such a great kid... He did a terrific job in the end. He told Jonathan that it wasn't as hard as he thought it would be. He told me that he pretended that everyone was sitting there in only their underwear. Ha ha ha!