Lounge Lizard

Yesterday was the Taylorsville Arts Council Annual Art Show. Wow! That is a mouthful! Anyway, we, as a council, decided to add something new to our art show this year: background music. The council chambers, where we hold the show, has a baby grand piano that hardly ever gets played. It seemed like a good idea. There was only one problem, I ended playing for half the time.

Susan arranged for a piano teacher she knows to bring her students for a mini-recital, and they took the first two hours. Ten kids, two hours, that's not a lot. That left two hours to be filled. I took Sarah with me and had her play for about 30 minutes. She did well considering all the advance notice she got was me telling her on the way to ballet rehearsal that morning, and reminding her on the way home (we left 10 minutes after we got home).

That left me 90 minutes to fill by myself. So, I started playing. I played everything I had and then I started repeating stuff, taking requests (minimally), singing along, and improvising in general. And this is what I learned:

I know why lounge lizards improvise and jazz things up (I certainly did): If they don't, they are bored out of their wits!