FKO, part 3

[beige_alert]

Sunday began with the Children’s Concert. There were, in fact, two or three actual children in the audience, plus a great many young-at-heart. It was hilarious, of course. How could it not be? After the concert I was chatting with allisona and ohiblather and mentioned that I wanted to hear their German song someday. Debbie was surprised I hadn’t heard it, and the trio did a performance of it for me on the spot. Delightful!

The hugging contest was co-won by deborah_c and Joey Shoji. No surprise about Deborah, she’s the most huggarific person I’ve ever met.

The other song writing contest, with the list of weird words to work into a song written during the convention, produced some...remarkable...entries. Marilisa’s “Long Words Are Easy When You’re Greek” particularly sticks in my mind.

The performance by the choral harmony workshop was just fantastic. Particularly amazing with so little time to work on it.

The Hall Of Fame concert was also wonderful, with a diverse selection of songs and many people taking the stage at one time or another to help out on various songs.

Dinner Sunday night was fun. Several groups ended up coalescing into a mob that walked across the street to take over a corner of one of the restaurants. aunty_marion and deborah_c insisted I sit between them so they could, er, keep me out of trouble. Marion was yet again surprised by the shear volume of food typically served at North American restaurants. After eating, feeling a bit tired, Marion leaned over to rest her head on my shoulder. Deborah did likewise from the other side. Thus I served as pillow for two charming English women. After everyone else noticed us, numerous photos were taken, though I have not seen any of them yet.

The night’s filk was a crowded event, but I did get to play my show-off flute piece, Bach’s “little fugue” in G minor. Well, one voice of it. Fortunately for those of us who don’t play organ, Bach believed in using enough notes that it still sounds good even with a majority of them cut. I did get a number of nice comments about that piece. Later, Deborah took her turn at the classics, on violin. Delightful. Lots of other fun music from everyone else, too.

At some point I went around to where cflute was set up, to oggle her bass flute. She offered to go out in the hall with me and let my try playing it, an offer I was certainly not going to turn down. I found it surprisingly easy to play. I expected much more of a learning curve. What a lovely sound, too. I couldn’t remember a darn thing from memory, so I retrieved my music and played the first page of that fugue. It’s a wonderfully playable and beautiful instrument. I now suffer from Flute Lust. It will probably be a while before I can get myself one of those, and, really, I’d want a nicer regular flute first, but my, she has planted desires in my head.

I’d told hsifyppah earlier in the con that I very much wanted to hear “The Wreck of the Crash of the Easthill Mining Disaster,” given that I’ve been performing it in public yet had only heard it once and was rather hazy on the tune. (This delights her, by the way.) Alas, I was never around when she was singing it, so Sunday night we went up to her room with peteralway so I could finally hear it. She and Peter then did some rather cool-sounding improvisational noodling on banjola and mountain dulcimer.

By the time we finished that up the crowd in the main filk circle had diminished. I got a few funny ones in late at night, which was especially fun with so many people from far away who’d never heard them. I sang the Boogie Knights’ “Odyssey” (which is set to the Gilligan’s Island theme) especially for Marilisa, and Brooke, who’d not heard it before, found it especially...special. musicmutt‘s “An Abridgment” was also very well received. It’s always fun to have fresh victims for that sort of thing.

I had gone to bed by then, but at around 4AM Marilisa was goaded into trying to do a Greek translation of the Hockey Monkey song on the fly. (I can’t sing stuff I’ve rehearsed at 4AM.) filkerdave has a video of it on youtube.

Comments

[folkmew.livejournal.com]

I bet Ed would have enjoyed playing organ along with you if he'd had access to one! :-) I know that playing organ regularly is one thing he really misses after giving up the music director position. He'll be glad when we settle and he can get a new position or at least sub. Sorry Ed missed your Bach. :-(

[beige-alert.livejournal.com]

I'm amazed how many organists I'm running into these days (deborah_c, aryana_filker), since I always thought of it as one of the most exotic of instruments.

I know at least Deborah with her violin, and possibly others, joined in a bit with me, but I was concentrating so hard on playing that I couldn't really spare any attention. Alas.

[mvt.livejournal.com]

I didn't goad her I just made a suggestion : )

[deborah_c]

Actually, Ed and I both joined in in places :-)