A day of three concerts! With the undergraduates and Framnäs students.

Thursday the 2nd of February was an intense long day.  The reason it was so long was because of moving gear.  Unlike Wednesday night, where the concert was in the same building as the percussion instruments, on Thursday we had to use the truck belonging to Framnäs to transport people and instruments across town.  The other problem was that it was about -28C

So luckily one of the Framnäs students, Lisa, is over 25 and can drive the truck.  So she and the other Framnäs students loaded the percussion into the truck and then came to the Musikhögskolan to collect us.  We couldn't all fit into the truck so we left Maria, Johanna, Astrid and Denis behind.  We drove into town to Krokodil cafe.  It's a lovely cafe with a big room that has a stage.  We loaded in and were all set by about 1pm, so we had sweets and coffee for lunch.  

This initial concert was very quiet - unbeknownst to us, Krokodil doesn't serve many customers on a thursday afternoon!  So we considered this first concert a bit of a warm-up.  It was really great to run through everyone's pieces without stopping.  It was a good confidence-boost for the students, some of whom were pretty nervous.

Then Denis had a great idea - let's play in Gallerien!  Gallerien is a shopping mall which is right next door to Krokodil.  Not as big as Woden plaza but bigger than Cooleman Court.  So Denis went and got the manager of Gallerien to listen to us play.  She was skeptical at first because she'd had "trouble with percussionists in the past" but she liked what she heard so we wheeled the instruments over!  It was crazy!

In Gallerien I had all the students play but I didn't do my pieces.  I was feeling very tired from all the stress and the cold.

After that gig, we packed up and a load of people took the instruments to Framnäs for our third concert of the day.  Johanna, Astrid, Charles, Maria and I were left behind so we bought some snacks and rested.

When Jake picked us up again, we went to Max for takeaway burgers.  We bought lots and got to Framnäs around 5:30.  It was great and energising to eat all together and talk about fun stuff.

This concert people actually came to.  It was so lovely to see all the students with their friends being excited and playing fun music.  The concert went off without a hitch, which is amazing considering how tired we all were.  All the students played really well!

The only thing left after the concert was to take the instruments back to the Slagverkrum.  Then a couple of trips later we were all home!  It was a wonderful day, super tiring but rewarding for everyone.  I think that I achieved what I set out to do: make everyone excited about ragtime, and encourage everyone to perform more often.