Ryan's Recital was yesterday. T'was a long drive, but completely worth it! The opening notes of the Bach almost brought me to tears. She played the first few lines with a professional sort of confidence. There were some extra juicy slides and a few intonation issues – but she was aware of them and I know that a second performance would have cleaned it up. (In retrospect, it was silly of me not to ask her for a private recital afterwards – why didn’t I do that?????) It’s too bad we were in a room with dead acoustics. I’d love to hear it again in a concert hall (or better yet a cathedral!) where the sounds can bounce off of each other.

You should have seen the way she moved during the Mozart! And the way she cued her accompanist (complete with sniffs!) She was in control but the music flowed through her whole body. The last movement of the Franc was incredible – she was rocking.(And I need to get a recording of that piece!!!)

It was weird to have strangers recognize me as “The First Violin Teacher.”
(And, as The First Violin Teacher I have to confess, the bows were a little disappointing). They were more of an embarrassed, half hearted Please-Stop-Clapping-Sort-of-Bow rather than a gracious Thank-You-for-Your-Applause-Sort-of-Bow. Bowing is one of the first dozen things I taught my public school students and I was going to tease her about it – but the I realized that her dress, was probably not very conducive to deep gracious bowing.

Ryan’s mom makes the best peanut butter cookies (and I was very excited to see lottsa peanut butter cookies at the post-recital-party!) They were even better than I remember, and I was sent home with a plateful of leftover cookies. (FYI – Peanut Butter Cookies and Earl Gray tea make for a great driving snack!)

* * * *
This summer, Ryan is teaching in the Summer Strings program,
which means she officially becomes my colleague.
How cool is that?!