First, the whole group. The man on the left is the Director of the Foundation.. His real name is Adolfo Taborga but he goes by the nickname "Fito". He was kind enough to come and participate in this little concert, bringing his wife Vivian and their son Rafael (who is a member of the Youth Symphony). The dark-haired lady is also employed by the Foundation but I'm not certain in what capacity. Her name is Silvia (don't know her surname, sorry) and she is originally from Italy. She also brought her husband and their two small children (so he ended up out in the hall with them most of the time. Elena and Esther are about 2 and 4, respectively.)
Here is a picture of Erin and Will performing the 2nd movement of Vivaldi's Violin Concerto for 2 Violins.
Here are Will, Erin, Fito and Zach playing a composition by John Leavitt (the pianist), called "Divertimento".
This was REALLY interesting. They had an exquisite Tschaikovsky piece for string quartet (can't remember the proper identification, but it's very famous - I've heard it many times) and the 4th movement from Dvorak's "America" for string quartet. However, a string quartet is usually two violins, a viola and a cello - and no one in the group plays the cello - so Ben played the cello part on the alto sax! If I had not seen it with my own eyes, I wouldn't have believed it. The sound was beautiful! (although when the piece got really soft, Ben had a hard time - it's very hard to play a sax that softly.)
Just to show you how talented Ben is - the next number was a flute duet with Silvia - also very lovely.
Fito played "Meditation" from Thais by Massenet - one of my all-time favorite pieces of music. He and I agreed that it is truly celestial music. John accompanied him and is an amazing pianist. He reminds me of Shawn (Kirchner) in his intensity, his desire to compose, and his talent. Of course Shawn is quite a way ahead of him right now, but I could see John becoming like Shawn in another 15-20 years.
At the end, they sang "I Am A Child of God" - and it was beautiful 5-part harmony. They sang the first verse in Spanish (3 of the 5 served Spanish missions and are fluent), Will sang the second verse in Mandarin and then played a violin obligato while the others sang it in Spanish, and at their invitation we all joined in on the third verse. It was a lovely ending to a lovely evening.
Obviously that concert last night was the highlight of our week, but there were some other really nice happenings too. Friday morning we had 6 wedding parties on our shift. We were running around like crazy (or as near running as you dare do inside the temple) trying to find all the families and friends for each group and get everyone to where they needed to be. One young husband-to-be (with lamentable but typical Latin timing) arrived so late that his fiance went through her endowment session without him! (The temple president talked to her and asked if she wanted to wait but she said "no". It would have thrown their entire day - reception, pictures, the works - 90 minutes off schedule.) The husband-to-be was already endowed so when the session was over we got them together and in the end things worked out. They are from La Paz. Both had their parents and other family members in attendance. Here are a couple of pictures (you'll notice some traditions are the same everywhere.)
President Norman performed the sealing (marriage) ceremony.
Another sweet couple from Santa Cruz were married that same morning (that is - their temple marriage, for eternity. They had been married civilly for 30 years.) Usually the older couples don't dress up this much, but she had a proper wedding dress and I thought it was WONDERFUL!
That's all for today, I think. Have a wonderful week . . . . vayan con Dios!
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