Spring Concerts

NU Orchestra Concert (April 2017)

For the past three years, the highlight of the spring season has been the end of year choir concert.  This year, we had an additional treat - the first ever concert by the NU orchestra.  The NU orchestra is a combination of folk instruments and traditional instruments and they play a combination of classic Kazakh music and songs from music and television.  Their biggest hit is playing the theme song form the BBC drama "Sherlock" and the theme song from game of thrones.

Traditional flutes

Traditional Kazakh song with guest singer from musical university.

The group formed from students sitting around in the evenings playing together and now they have an adviser who is a leading ethno-musicologist who helps them learn how to play some traditional instruments that have not been used for a long time (like a little oblong flute).

This year I have one of the girls on the basketball team who is also in the orchestra.  She plays the dombra, a two-stringed instrument (see it here).  She asked me if Yulia and I would like to come to the inaugeral concert.  Of course we couldn't turn down such an invitation, so we went.  We were lucky to be given VIP seats next to the university president and other "real VIPs" and to have a great seat in the new student theater that opened this spring in the student dormitory complex.

Game of Thrones Theme Song (Blindfolded)

The concert was fantastic.  They played very well, and the music itself was lively.  They had a few student hosts, one of whom is my student, and they were genuinely funny and very charming.

Orchestra playing blindfolded to demonstrate proficiency

The highlight of the concert was a traditional battle of dombras when four of the boys spent about 8 minutes doing various things to show that they were the best players.  It was very cool.

Sherlock Theme

Traditional Kazakh Song

We also attended the spring choir concert (the next day) and our whole family was given the VIP treatment.  The girls' participation with the choir has made us a VIP family with the choir.  The concert this year was one of their best.  They had good group numbers and fun individual numbers.  The students went a bit overboard with the dramatic story that they tried to tell to put the whole concert together, but it was a lot of fun. Leaving the concerts we had the feeling that when we do decide to leave NU and Kazakhstan, it will be a very hard day.  For as many small (and sometimes large) frustrations that crop up, we genuinely love the students and the interactions that we have with them.  They are great kids.

NU Choir

NU choir voted Nika to receive their Best Soloist of the Year Award for her performance in their Winter Concert

Track and field

This year all four of our girls have been going to track and Field at the Children's Palace. Usually only Nika is old enough to go to the city track meets but in April all kids had an opportunity to try themselves in a track meet. It wasn’t a big one, just for the kids from their track and field class but still probably about 30 kids participated. They ran in groups according to their age and pretty much everyone won something. All four of our girls placed. Nika took the first place in her age group. Lina ran in the same heat as Nika, and came in third but because she was the only one in her age group, they gave her first place. Sophie and Lexa ran against each other and took first and third respectively. They were all happy.

Stretching before the meet. As always things started 30 minutes late (In Kazakhstan there is no concept of time but it will be a whole other post sometime later)

Nika and Lina running in their heat. The twins ran so fast that I didn't have time to focus my camera on them (of course, they also ran a much shorter distance).

The funny part was during the awards ceremony. For whatever reason they had a television that day. In fact our kids have been on television a couple of times this year. So, they sat up the podium and put some presents on each place. One would think the presents would go to the kids winning the 1^st, 2^nd, and 3^rd places. Nope! They took pictures of the podium with the presents and then promptly took the presents away before the winners stepped on the podium. It was just for the television. Oh well, the kids were happy anyway.

Here is the set up with the presents for the photo only!

Nika took first, and her best friend took second (notice the presents on the left side behind the poster board).

Like I said, Lina was the only one in her age group, so they stuck her with another heat's winner.

And the twins. Sophie was running head to head with the girl who took second place but she wasn't going to let anybody else win, so in the last 3 seconds she stretched her body forward and won by a head.

All the participants. Their coach, Magzhan, is on the left in a blue shirt.

Our crew.