Caleb Prepares for his First Concerto Competition

(Silly Caleb in his new hat!)

Caleb has been super busy these past weeks. He has been working harder than he ever has on piano. He is preparing for his first Concerto Competition.

A concerto is a piece that is played between 2 instruments or with one instrument and an orchestra. Caleb has been learning a piano concerto in which he can play with another piano or with an orchestra.

It is his first concerto and it is many pages long and lasts about 7 minutes when played through. He has been at rehearsals preparing already every night this week. It takes a lot of work though and he is being very diligent in his practicing.

He is working with his teacher and a fellow piano student who will play the other piano part for him. The other student is a senior in high school who seems to play so effortlessly beautiful, while little Caleb really struggles with his small hands, but somehow he makes it work. He is trying really hard.

Here is a little video preview of their progress:

We wish Caleb the best of luck for his upcoming competition. It is a first, and they don't have age divisions for his age group really. They have an Elementary division that is for up to 6th grade. Caleb is only 8 and should be in the 2nd grade although he skipped a year, so there will be many kids much older than he is. We still hope he does well. He just loves the certificates anyway, even if they are just for participation.

Caleb Goes on Tour

Recently, Caleb has started "going on tour" in sense. Well, not exactly, but he has began being asked to play for different groups at different friends of family's churches.

At Christmas time Caleb played for his church, a friend's church, and for a couple of different church programs.

This past month he was asked to play a song for a couple more church performances. One at a friends, and soon he will play for his Grandpop's church. He just loves doing this and hopes he can play all the time.

Here is a video of the song he played last week at his friend's church. There are a bit of mistakes in this video, but he did so well during his actual performance.

Caleb Wins Again for Best Musical Composition!

Caleb entered his school's arts program this year under musical composition with a new song that he wrote. Last year his composition won from both his school and the region. This year his new composition won out of his school as well.

He was so happy and excited to get a medal!

Here he is performing his song he wrote called "Happy Together":

Christmas Performances

Caleb had a very very busy Christmas season of performing this year. He was asked to play in 3 church Christmas programs, and once at another church. Besides that, he played at Maceys several times, his Great Grandma's nursing home, and he had a piano recital at a fancy house up behind the capitol building.

It wasn't always fun though. One important day where he had 2 performances scheduled, Caleb got really really sick and so missed his church Christmas program, but still made it to his recital that night although he felt really awful. He threw up just a half hour before his recital, but he still played. It turned out alright, although he wasn't well. Just think of how much better he can play when he is feeling good!

Here is a video from his recital performance:



He played an old Christmas favorite for a stake Christmas program. Here he is at home running through the piece:



He did get to reschedule his piano number to the day after Christmas to play in church since he was sick for the Christmas program. They were very nice to do that for him. He also played it in his aunt's church earlier in the month.

Here he plays an arrangement of Silent Night:



This year Caleb has teamed up with his brother who plays guitar.


They played a little duet of "What Child is This" for a Christmas program dinner. Here is a video of them practicing at home:



Then, of course, he can't miss playing at Maceys. They didn't have a nice grand piano this year to play on, but he made do with what they had. His brother came along as well for a few numbers.

The piano wasn't very big, and not very loud, but he did manage to play alright. Here's a fun new song he learned that he played called "Linus and Lucy" otherwise knows as "the Snoopy Song".



Caleb had an awesome Christmas season and loved performing! Now for a bit of a break. There aren't any performances, competitions, or recitals for a while. Just time to practice practice practice!

Caleb Plays in Church

Recently, Caleb played the piano in church for all of the congregation. He played a song arranged by composer Aaron Waite entitled "Be Still My Soul". He did a great job.
Here is a little video of him playing just one verse and the 2nd ending at home:

Piano Evaluations and UMTA's Honors Recital

Caleb participated in the Utah Music Teacher's Associations Piano Evaluations in October. It is where students play one or two songs and get evaluated by a couple of judges to get some performance feedback.

Caleb loves doing this. He participated last year where he received his very first certificate with a gold seal on it to hang on his wall. Of course he got another one this year!

It is not a competition, however the judges will pick about 70 kids out of Utah who they think are the best to perform at that year's annual conference.

This year, they chose Caleb!

How excited he was that he was going to get to perform. It was going to be held at a big University in November. Caleb played 2 songs at Piano Evaluations, but they only wanted one song to be played at their performance and they chose his ever so practiced Sonatina 3 by Clementi.

We made the trip up to Weber State University for Caleb to perform.

Caleb loved that it had a big map to tell you where to go.

He also loved the giant statues. Here he poses with one of his sisters and his brother who were good sports to come along and support him.

He got to play in a ballroom with a fancy piano on stage. He says the piano bench was particularly heavy that he was trying to scoot up. Here is his performance:



He played with about 12 other kids, of course Caleb always seems to be that littlest one compared to all the others.

And, how exciting for him that he gets another gold seal certificate!!! This time it is for Outstanding Solo Performance!

Congrats to Caleb!

Fall Piano Recital and Duets

Caleb performed in his fall piano recital this week. He played Knight Rupert by Schumann for his solo piece:



And then for the first time he played in some piano duets with another student. Poor Caleb had bad allergies that night and so you can see him during the last song struggling not to sneeze. It's kind of funny, but he held it in and it didn't affect his playing!