Ruby's Guitar Recital

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ik1GxStSnN4

This is what I missed last Friday.  Ruby's guitar recital.  I love Ruby's recitals because guitar is my favorite, there is always a big spread of good food after, it is at Peter Prier's recital hall next to my old school, I like the other families and it's fun to hear Ruby play.

This time, though, Scott got the guitar gig and I took Ari to a "cello play-in" rehearsal in Ogden.  Boo.  Even though I missed the guitar experience, it was relaxing to sit in a beautiful Presbyterian church listening to a cello orchestra and reading for an hour and a half.  Cello is the only instrument that can make up an ensemble without any other instruments.  It has all the ranges, and the sound is gorgeous.  Seeing Ari playing in the group, marking her music and sticking the pencil behind her ear, turning the pages, watching the conductor...sigh...I'm sure I'm one of the few moms out there whose heart is warmed by nerdiness.

Each instrument has its own form of geekdom.  Cello players are sortof the academic nerds, the nerds who turn out to be pretty cool when you get to know them.  Violinists are the most narcissistic and supremely confident, because they always get the melody.  (Sarah, Maria, you'll have to tell me what harp people are like!)  Flutists are the annoying perfectionists.  Violists, of course, are just plain weird.  That's why the play the viola.  All bass players have a dark side.  (Same with tuba.)  Trumpet: cocky.  French horn: quirky.  Pianists can be either really grounded or completely neurotic.  (And people who think about these things are really lame!)  But guitar people are just cool.  Classical guitar is a small and insular world where everyone truly is a music lover to the nth degree.  All the repertoire is painfully beautiful, and the people who play it have artistic souls.  For such a solitary instrument, guitarists are more community oriented than you would think.  It's a fun world.  I hope I'm in the audience next time, Ruby!  Great job!