Well, my faith in the youth of this country has been restored! After my rant about Big Brother and ASBOs, I'm sure you were all thinking that I hated it here. And it can be depressing. But all the youth are not like that, and this was proved to me last night.
I went to a performance put on by the Surrey County Arts Council at the Royal Albert Hall. First of all....WOW! The Royal Albert Hall is spectacular! Amazing! Gorgeous! I was awestruck to be in such a building. It's huge and lush and beautiful! I forgot my camera, so I didn't get any good pictures, just a couple of really bad ones on my phone, which I refuse to show anyone because they are too awful. I was seated down close to the stage, and not only are the seats not squashed close together, but they swivel!! So, it was quite comfortable! Anyway, on to the concert.
I went originally because the twins' primary school was performing. I didn't really know anything about it, except that a bunch of primary schools from Surrey County were going to be performing. It turned out to be a big performing arts extravaganza called "The Unknown Region". There was an 800-member primary school mass choir, a 400ish-member secondary school mass choir, multiple orchestras (jazz, philharmonic, wind, percussion, harp), a youth choir that was fantastic, and a samba band! It was quite long, but I didn't want to leave! Over 1700 performers in all, almost all youth. Quite amazing. It was a high quality performance, with two premieres of original pieces composed by participants. I think my favourite was the jazz ensemble; they played a few big band pieces and some more traditional jazz. I was so impressed with all these kids putting in the time and effort to practice and perform - it really gave me new hope for the youth of the country. And what a great experience for them - to perform in the Royal Albert Hall! The evening ended by the audience singing "Jerusalem" and "Land of Hope and Glory", during the last repetition of which they dropped purple ballons!! It ended at about 10:00 pm, which is awfully late for some of those kids, but they were so hyped up it didn't seem to matter!
As you can imagine, trying to find two little girls amongst 800 children was quite the feat, but I managed to find the group afterwards by the sign they were holding up for their school so parents could find them. It also helped that their mom texted me to tell me what colour their school uniforms were (all children here wear school uniforms). The girls were happy to see me and I could tell they were glad that I came. Leeann said she had been looking for me in the audience. They were up at the top by the organ, so it was no wonder I couldn't find them at the intermission or during my scans of the areas the children were seated in!
Well, that's that! I will definitely be looking for excuses to go to the Royal Albert Hall again soon!!
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