[edshuck]

This is a multi part story. All goo. Some amazing.

When Briall (pron. Bria with the ll silent) entered the 6th grade (age 11), she tried out for softball and did not make the team. So, my wife said, "We have to get her into something, she will be a teen and drive us all nuts". So, the local Community Music Center was $35 for a family membership and the Childrens Chorus was FREE. Right price and the CMC really teaches singing.

A year there and the director wanted us to move her to the teen singers. Her voice when speaking is a childs. When singing, similar to Ella Fitzgerald, Bonnie Raitt, Carmen Mac Rae.

The teen singers do musical numbers, America from West Side Story, the Fugue from Guys and Dolls and so on. In the talent show at school she did a song from Annie Get your Gun. Not the style for middle school.

The CMC does a Christmas play each year and it is a Spanish language (in song) of the nativity. She tried for and got the part of the angel that comes on stage at the start and sings in Spanish for five minutes - not opera - but way upscale.

Last spring, the school was having talent show again. And she was to perform. I ask "What". She replied "Love for Sale by Ella". My reply was, well, restrained . With, sing it for the pricipal and if it is ok with him, fine with me.

She did, and he said, "Not age appropriate. But would you sing with the new school rock bands?" The bands had been playing for a month and the screechiness had left their playing. Three days later she sang, Satisfaction (not a long distance from the Ella song) and the Buffalo Springfield song that starts "Somethings happening here" to a group that would do any penal colony prowd.

The other kids loved it.

A week later, they played a fund raiser for Blue Bear School of Music, provider of the instruments and the instructor. This was at Dolby Labs headquarters in San Francisco.

Naturally, the bands were conveyed to the gig by streeeech limo. This departure was viewed by some of the students waiting for rides home and the legend was all over the school by morning.

A local radio station carried a 15 minute segment on the bands (there are two and Briall is vocalist for both).

Briall and I were invited to the gallery opening for Michael Mendelson at the Paul Ruben Gallery and when the music entertainment did not arrive, Briall sang. Then Michael sent 75 of his photos to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and 450 others to the Smithsonian.

It has been a heck of a summer.

Briall's first class at the teen singers, one girl ask, "Whats the little kid doing here". Then they sang. Then the girl remarkes, "Little Kid, big voice".

Now she is old. Will be 13 next month. She has really had a fun summer.

Michael Mendelson, Blue Bear School of Music and CMC have sites on the web.