Piano Teams

Willa was old enough and advanced enough to do Piano Teams this year. Piano Teams are a big part of the teaching method that her teacher follows. It can mean duets or trios, but most of the time it means five pianos and ten hands. So basically, five kids each on a separate piano playing all together. So. Much. Fun. My favorite memories of music growing up was group lessons and playing along with other friends, so I'm just so excited that Willa is getting a little bit of a similar experience.

It was A LOT of work. They started working on their song during the summer. Then, when school started we started having group lessons together. That meant either the teacher scheduled an additional hour into her teaching schedule when we were all available, or she used the kids' private lesson times and we all met during those times. Either way, it was a lot. Several of the kids had taken a rule out of my playbook and asked for morning lessons. So three mornings a week for an hour before school, they practiced. Then they also practiced Friday afternoon for an hour. Did I mention yet that it was a lot? I think we were all so exhausted and ready to be done! Cheryl, their teacher, is truly a saint for putting it all together. They are all so young that it was ground zero when they started. I mean, they had to play, they had to count rests, they had to listen for the other parts to come in. Ensemble playing is complicated! But she pulled it out of them.

They don't compete, but they were adjudicated on it at UNLV. The organization wants the kids to have fun and really likes them to dress up for their pieces. The kids were playing Yankee Doodle Noodle by Jeff Shumway (who is a big piano name at BYU). I happened to have these old 4th of July skirts and we pulled everything else together. Willa had to squeeze into a 2T sized skirt and Madeleine into the 4T, but we put some leggings under and it worked just fine. I think they looked so adorable! Willa was the youngest by about a year and a half and you could tell she just loved being with these older kids. At practices, if the teacher had to do something she was just hanging onto every word and action that the older kids were doing. Thankfully they're all good kids!

This first clip is just 30 seconds of the performance. I was in the back holding a sleeping Lars and recording with my phone in the other hand - so I'm lucky to get the video quality that I did. I cut this sample so you could see my favorite part, which is when they do a page turn at the same time and yell "Yankee Doodle flipped his noodle!"

 This second is the full video for anyone who wants to watch it.