It's Christmas time in the city...again!
Music Camp International again performed a family Christmas concert at the National Opera House on Saturday afternoon -- Christmas Eve according to the Orthodox calendar. MCI is a wonderful program that gathers children from 10 to 14 years of age, spends an intense week with them, and then performs a concert for friends and family to attend. It is quite amazing what these children learn in just a week's time! Connie Fortunato, the head of this ministry, believes that all children have music in them, someone just needs to draw it out of them. She offers camps several times a year in Ukraine, as well as in Romania and the US. And the Christmas concert, with the highlight being Handel's Messiah for young voices sung in Ukrainian, is becoming a tradition in Kyiv.
Jeanne frequently helps at the camps, though this time she was unavailable. Dasha is Connie's translator, and Jamie was able to help with percussion this session. A highlight for us personally...was watching Jamie in the orchestra pit of the National Opera House playing the timpani! He was performing with seasoned professionals...excerpts from the Nutcracker and then the Messiah.
I guess a mom just never gets tired of watching her kids!
