Um. Okay, so I don't know what to say about what happened with the Space Shuttle apart from the obvious, so I'm not going to try for the moment.

It's been a stressful couple of weeks. For those of you musicians who are reading this, you may be amused to know that last week I was once again called upon to conduct an ensemble in performance. It was a chorus this time, comprised of all of the first- and second-year students at Kamiichiki Junior High School. Also, instead of the school's culture festival, it was at a Prefectural Junior High School Music Contest. Last year at this contest, Kami-chu earned a gold award (equivalent to Minnesota's "superior rating"), and they hoped to get another. So, no pressure or anything.

I did get to rehearse the song, "Seishun no ichi page" ("the First page of youth" or somesuch) with the group a few times in the two weeks before the contest. Now, it's been a while since I had conducted a chorus (although I did get to conduct To-chu's brass band once two culture festivals ago), and I was a bit nervous.

So we get on stage, they announce us, I bow, get on the podium, and raise my hands -- and I hear a jingle from my coat pocket.

Basics in Conducting, unwritten rule number 1: Remove keys and loose change from pockets before you start.

I begin the song, and I have to concentrate on not speeding up. Meanwhile, the audience is murmuring because my conducting "style" is not like any they are used to seeing. You could say it was avant-garde, but you could also say that it was frantic and unpolished. Also, about halfway through the song, my left hand started spasming out of extreme nervousness, with the result that my ring finger twitched out of control for a good chunk of the performance. Well, whatever else you say about it, it was effective.

According to the music teacher, the judges all commented on my directing, saying things like "unique," "interesting," and the like.

The way I see it is that a lot of schools went with student conductors, while a few went with other teachers as conductors. In a number of cases, the students appeared to be conducting to some sort of set routine in their heads, not reacting to what they were hearing, and generally mirroring the beat with their left hand. Some conductors would stop the beat when arriving at a long note, merely holding out their hands until the cut-off.

I, on the other hand, remembered at least some of the things that Dr. Bob and Dr. A tried to teach me, and directed expression with the left while keeping time with the right. Meanwhile, I apparently used my whole body to add emphasis to my conducting. I felt I must have looked like a spaz. A few parents came up to me afterwards and said that I looked like I was dancing. Go figure. I had fun, though, and the students all were very happy as we left the stage.

We were one of the last performances before the lunch break. As our students were lining up to return to the bus, the chairman/chief organizer of the festival/contest came over to us and made a few compliments about our performance and my conducting. That was a surprise.

(we got the gold award, by the way!)