My blog from Houston, Texas. Updated most weeks, usually on Sundays.
This has been especially so in the field of the arts this week, where we have enjoyed musical concerts on most days of the week. Three concerts especially stand out in my mind.
The first concert was on Monday evening when our Middle and Upper School musicians presented a holiday-themed Winter Concert. Brilliantly directed by Richard Dee (Head of Performing Arts), Jason Peguero (Director of Instrumental Music), Sina Thompson (Orchestra Director) and Shaun Peacock (Dance Instructor and Choreographer), several hundred people in the audience were treated to about 25 (although I didn’t keep an accurate count) pieces of band and orchestral music, singing, jazz and dance. Although I found sitting on the hard bleachers in the PAAC excruciating (I am one of those people who appreciates some back support when sitting down), the quality of the performances meant that the hour and a half passed far too quickly, and like many others in the audience, I went home yearning for more.
Then, on Wednesday morning, I was privileged to attend “Broadway Beat”, a musical presentation in The Globe by our 4th Grade students that was superb in every way. Directed by our music teachers, Ms Natasha Ramírez and Mr Gwenaël Toutous, the performance took the audience through the history and breadth of Broadway productions, with spectacular performances of songs such as “I Want to be Happy” (from ‘No No Nanette’), “Give My Regards to Broadway” (from ‘Little Johnny Jones’), “Dancing Queen” (from ‘Mama Mia’), “The Perfect Nanny” (from ‘Mary Poppins’), “La Faute à Voltaire” and “A la Volanté du Peuple” (from ‘Les Misérables’), and “We Go Together” (from ‘Grease’) as the grand finale.
Like the parents who also attended the performance, I found myself humming the tunes that the students had performed so well for most of the rest of the day.
As regular readers of this blog are probably accustomed to hearing, the highlights of my week at Awty always focus on my interactions with our students. On Monday I had a real treat when I was invited as a guest speaker to teach Mr John Chesterton’s three Grade 8 classes about the Middle East. The classes had been studying the forces that might lead populations in Middle Eastern nations to rise up, rebel and replace their governments. I had been fortunate enough to travel through most countries in the Middle East over the last few years before coming to Awty, shortly before most of the current upheavals began, and I had taken many hundreds of photos during my travels. Knowing this, Mr Chesterton invited me to share some of my photos and insights with his Grade 8 classes.
I set myself an ambitious task – 250 photos covering aspects of Yemen, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, Israel and Palestine (with commentary), all in one period, times three class groups. I had forgotten that Monday’s classes were to be shortened because of morning assembly, making my ambitious target even more ambitious to the point of becoming a bit unrealistic. Nonetheless, I managed to show all the photos to one class, I got to within a few of the end with another, and unfortunately I had to omit Palestine entirely with the third.
12:12:12 on 12/12/12
Sunday, 16 December 2012