She Did It Again!

That Girl - I tell ya. We went to Austin for the All-State solo & ensemble competition Saturday and once again, she nailed her solo - Perilhou's Ballade - to rave reviews from the judge, Helen Blackburn, who is a pretty big name in flutes around here. After the performance, Helen clapped and said, "Brava! Excellent job! Do you take lessons?" The Girl said yes, and named her flute teacher, a friend of Helen's through their work with Texas Flute Society. Helen said, "Ohh! THAT explains it! Flute players from Fundietonfieldvilleview just don't get THAT good!" The feedback sheet was covered in lovely gushy praise as the icing on the cake. (That she has effectively written her own scholarship check to just about any music school she chooses is the candles on top.) Of course we're not proud of her at all...

This video is naturally not of The Girl's performance, because she never lets me into those performances with or without a camera, but it's the same music. The thing is our Girl performed it equally flawlessly and entirely from memory.


Next year, she's taking on Prokofiev's Sonata for Flute and Piano in D - a piece smuggled out of Soviet Russia during the 1940's that is so hard and so famous that it's known only as "The Prokofiev" in flute circles. It's also so hard that there's no memory requirement for the competitions. Her flute teacher, who has a doctorate in flute, is excited that The Girl is taking it on. She's had the music a week and already has the first page down. Here's a clip of the greatest living flute player Sir James Galway playing it:


Rock on, flutey girl, rock on...