Caleb loves to play all kinds of songs, but he has a particular love for playing church songs. Really, he loves to find fancy arrangements of church songs, so much that he came up with an idea.
What if he played a different church song arrangement each week? And what if he did it at the same time and same day each week and made it sort of a weekly webcast?
Well, Caleb came up with his own series which he named "Sundays @ 6".
He decided that each week on Sundays at 6 o'clock, he would upload a new church song arrangement.
It all started on July 22nd, where he played his first song, Faith;
The next week he continued with another song, I Stand All Amazed;
And the 3rd week he played I Believe in Christ;
Caleb was pretty excited about his new series, and he looked forward to many more weeks to come!
It is Summertime here, and very hot. Caleb loves to get wet in the summer to cool off, but what do YOU like to do in the summertime?
There is a song at church that is called Oh, What Do You Do in the Summertime? There is a pianist at church who says it is one of her favorite songs. Caleb found a fancy little arrangement of the song and thought it would be nice to surprise her with it on her birthday.
Caleb auditioned to be part of a talent competition this summer in West Valley City, Utah. They chose him to compete although he was going to be the youngest one in the junior division. He would be a part of the Junior Talent Showcase for what the city called "WestFest". WestFest is like a big carnaval that the city does as part of it's "West Valley Days" where they celebrate the heritage of their city.
It was a little bit of a drive, but Caleb loves performing and so he was excited to go.
He played the Jon Schmidt "All of Me" where he bangs his arms on the piano.
He had some tough competition (plus they were all older), but he did an awesome job. He stole the show!
Here's the video of his performance:
In the end, he ended up winning 2nd place!
Not only that, but he was given $100 to go with his prize!
AND, for winning, he was invited to come back and perform on stage for the next 2 nights as part of a "Winner's Showcase".
Caleb had the best time!
He sure loves performing!
(Here's the part where he bangs his arms on the piano that we tried to capture on camera:)
Well, we did go back downtown to hunt for the 10th and final piano and we found it!
This one sat right in front of a bar, so we sat back by the homeless man looking for free beer and listened to Caleb play a little "bar song".
Since it was the last time we would be downtown before they took away all the pianos, Caleb had some fun walking back and playing on a couple of the pianos he had discovered before.
He had lots of fun finding the downtown maps and hanging out with his sister.
He played an old song on the piano in front of the Nordstrom building and then we went along home.
Piano Trek 2012 was some of the best time Caleb had ever had. Too bad they don't leave pianos around downtown all the time.
As part of this "Street Pianos" program, they have put out 10 pianos around downtown SLC in this "Play Me; I'm Yours" experiment.
Each piano has been uniquely painted by different artists and have been placed in several locations around town. Most of them are in walking distance of each other. Some are on street corners, some up on porches, some in community centers, some in front of museums.
This was only going to be for a couple of weeks, and when we found out about it, we knew Caleb had to be a part of it. If there is anything else that Caleb loves beside piano, it is maps. If he hasn't been asking for pianos or sheet music, he has been asking for maps and atlases. He loves to study maps, draw maps, and look at street guides.
Street Pianos even had a website with a map of all the piano locations that you could print out.
So, we printed it out and gave it to Caleb. He goes to piano lessons downtown, so we figured after piano lessons we would go on an adventure with the map in a quest to find every piano and play a different song on each one!
At each piano we took a picture and Caleb held up the number of which piano it was. They were all beautiful. Some played better than others. Some had sticky keys, and a few were out of tune, but he still played them all. It proved to be a little too windy for sheet music, so mostly he played his memorized pieces.
There were 10 pianos in all, but we ended up only going to 9 of them, as the last one was in front of a bar, and it was getting dark, so we didn't think being out in front of a bar was the best situation for a young boy and also his 4 year old sister who had tagged along.
Caleb had so much fun! He met a lot of new people and we heard some other little concerts. At one piano he had people pass by on horse and carriage who clapped for him. Some pianos were at locations that were just too noisy, either by too much traffic, or at the last piano, there was a very loud street "musician" on guitar only a few feet away. At the last piano, Caleb had taken his hat off and a few people came by to give him tips!
We created a little video of Caleb's experience playing around town;
This was almost better than Christmas for Caleb! Wouldn't it be awesome if this wasn't just an experiment, but they could have pianos around town all the time to play? Well, I would worry about the rain or snow hurting them, and maybe it would get annoying if people who didn't really know how to play started messing around with them, but what a wonderful thing it was!
Caleb wants to find the last one by the pub next week after piano lessons. Maybe we can get to it if we go just a little bit earlier. We shall see!
Caleb took part in the SLC Piano Competition again this year, and this time he took home 2 awards!
He competed in 3 different categories, and won in 2 of them. He got a 3rd place medal for playing his Prelude and Fugue in the classical division,
And, he took an Honorable Mention in the modern division for the "All of Me".
From this competition we learned that there were a lot of very skilled pianists who were all very technical and exact in their playing. While Caleb works hard and can do well with technical pieces, the other kids were playing easier pieces. Caleb likes to take on the big pieces, so it may take some time for his little hands to match up to the hugeness of the songs that he plays. He was the best entertainer we thought. He might not be perfect or as exact in his playing as some of the other young pianists, but he really was enjoyable and the most fun to watch!
Caleb had a late Spring Recital where he got to perform 2 pieces. We were a little nervous because another girl was going to be playing the same exact piece, so we hoped he wouldn't sound bad next to an older student, but in the end he did well.
Here he is playing his first piece, Bach's Prelude and Fugue in C Minor;
And here is his second piece, Bach's Invention No. 8;
