We finished up with the Kiddie Concerts today, part of the ArtSPARK program. What a joy it is to see and hear these kids. It’s well worth the early morning start time. Really. You can see some photos if you go to the Mercury News page here.

Our program was entitled “It’s About Time” and we played music in 2/4, 3/4, 4/4, 5/4, 6/8 and 7/4. The final work, Dave Brubeck’s “Unsquare Dance” has us and the kids doing a part of stomping and clapping or snapping that goes like this: stomp-clap-stomp-clap-stomp-clap-clap. (Or, when snapping, we do that in place of the clapping.) I went outside between the two shows one day and the kids who had just attended the first show were filing by to go off to the San Jose Taiko performance at the CPA. Two girls were doing the pattern “stomp-clap-stomp-clap-stomp-clap-clap” over and over as they walked. It was so much fun to see that!

Our conductor, Peter Jaffe, knows how to handle these concerts in just the right way … enough humor (for both the kids and us), enough enthusiasm, and loads of fun. I’m already looking forward to next year!

And in case you were wondering — YES I walked. I walked to the performances Tuesday through Friday, and walked home Tuesday through Thursday. I couldn’t walk home today since I needed to lug everything back home. Thankfully a friend drove me back home so I could still walk to work. I wish I could walk to work all the time. It really was fantastic to be able to do that!

I wasn’t sure I could post photos of the kids here where you can clearly see their faces. Several people have implied that might be an issue. So for now those will stay unseen. (If I hear otherwise I’ll put a few up.) This is why you are seeing a few of my “photo experiments” from the past few days.