Tonight is the Ross High School concert, always a good event.  Last week the brass players from the primary and secondary schools around the county gathered for their annual Christmas bash, with the Glasgow-based Scottish Co-op Band, home of the brass instrumental teacher, playing the second half of the concert.  I think it’s fair to say that, whilst the standard of the first half of the concert may best be described as variable, with a lot of young players who may have only been learning brass for a few months, overall the band has improved year on year.  And they only get one hour’s practice all together, just before the concert.  It’s always a great evening: this year’s highlight was the guest soloist, a gorilla drummer from the Co-op Band.  Nuff said.

But moving on.  School concert tonight, dress rehearsal yesterday.  When GP1 came in from school, he stopped for a chat, always a pleasant surprise.  He filled me on the day’s events then:

“GP2’s class was awful.  Really awful.”  😯

Big brother-speke I thought.  🙄

“No Mum, it was really, really bad!”  ❗

Junior came in from badminton. 

“Our rehearsal was terrible.  It was dreadful.  My guitar didn’t work…”

 Guitar? Why is he playing the guitar? GP2 has never been known to play the guitar – he’s mostly left handed and finds it very awkward.  Horn/trumpet, yes; keyboard, maybe; recorder, various shapes and sizes, xylophone, definitely.  But guitar?  He’s usually game for anything though and this could be confirmation for me that they do learn things at school.  Although I may be best reserving judgement until this evening.

“… the keyboard player didn’t play anything.  He just sat there.  The singer was squeaky. We weren’t ready and the curtain came up.”

Hmm.  Seems like maybe big brother spotted something after all.

“It’s going to be so embarrassing.”  😳

“It’ll be fine.  Bad rehearsals mean good shows. ”  (That was me.)

“No it won’t.  It’ll be awful.”

Well, we’ll see tonight.  I’m sure the show will be good! And apparently there’s at least one act to look out for; a group of girl singers are fantastic, apparently.  The singing or the girls, I wonder?  😆

Postscript

Just back, and it was fantastic!  GP2’s class band and the guitar playing were great, despite predictions. His elder brother’s class band, on the other hand, had major problems with the amplifier.  They were both in 2 or 3 other bands as well, so plenty of opportunity to get things right.  And as for the girls doing All That Jazz as the finale – well, let’s say that GP1 probably wasn’t too bothered that the soloist’s  microphone wasn’t working for the first part of the number.  The singing was good too.

All in all, a great evening with huge amounts of talent on display.