Jewelia Plays for Care Centers

Jewelia was asked to play her violin for a few different care centers.  She was asked to come to a church branch at a care center to play a song one Sunday, and to a rehab center another Sunday after their church services to play her violin.

She learned a new song called Nearer Thy God to Thee to play for the programs.

Her brother let her play it as part of his Sundays @ 6 as well.  

Here she is playing at home;

As you can see, she continues to work on songs with shifting.  Pretty soon she will be a pro!

The Baptism Song

Jewelia chose to be baptized this month.

She was so pretty dressed all in white.  

She wanted to play a special musical number as part of her program, so she invited her violin teacher to play a duet with her.

Here is a video of them practicing;

                             

They played it just perfect at the baptism!  

Jewelia is lucky because she has the best violin teacher who is so nice!

Jewelia Still Sings! (Live Performance on Stage!)

Jewelia was commenting that she didn't have very many singing videos up on her blog.  

While she does love to play the violin, Jewelia's first love will always be singing.

She wants everyone to know that YES!  She still sings!  

Recently she got to sing for a special scholarship benefit concert hosted by Miss Utah and Miss Murray.

She decided to learn the song Castle on a Cloud from Les Miserables.  She even dirtied up her face and dressed the part.  

She only learned the words to the song a couple of weeks before the event, but she was spectacular!  

She could give little Cozette a run for her money!

Here she is live on stage, accent and all!

          

And, not long after this event, Jewelia was asked to sing the National Anthem for a Memorial Day celebration.  She did really well and had it all memorized.  We didn't get a recording of the actual performance, but here she was practicing at home;

Jewelia Turns 8 Years Old!

Can it be?  

Jewelia celebrated her 8th birthday!!!

Where has the time gone?

She celebrated with family and had a beautiful towing pink princess tiara cake.

She got a pretty dress and bear,

And she even got a new bike so she could ride to school!

Happy Birthday Jewelia!!!

Fast Songs and Shifting!

Jewelia is almost going to be 8 years old!  

She likes her Suzuki songs, but every so often she likes to find a fun song to play.

Here she found a song from Sleeping Beauty.  

It has some pretty fast parts, but she makes it!

She has come so far in violin that she is learning a new skill----shifting!  She is trying hard to learn how to do it.  She has to slide her hand all the way up to the top of her neck and back down really fast.

Here she is trying some shifting in a new song in her Suzuki Book 3 called Humoresque;

Easter Time!

For Easter they asked Jewelia to play a song in church!  

She found a nice violin arrangement of For The Beauty of the Earth that she could play with her brother Caleb.  Jewelia dressed all up in her new pretty Easter dress.

She did a great job!

Here's a video of her practicing at home;

Oh, and if you noticed something different, you are right.  There is a new fancier piano that Caleb is playing on.  

These Suzuki Book 3 Songs are LONG!

It is Spring time and Jewelia is working on songs in Suzuki Book 3.  There are some pretty long songs.  It takes a lot of memorizing!  She finally got to where she could try playing her 2 songs with accompaniment. 

 Here she is playing Minuet:

       

As you can see, she is concentrating very hard.....

Here she is with Gavotte in G minor;

       

Working Along in Suzuki Book 3

Jewelia is now in violin Sukuki book 3!  She has come right along.  

Here she is practicing a new song;

Things don't always go as planned.  

Sometimes Jewelia even MESSES UP!!!  Ohhh!!!  (Horrified expression!!!)

It's OK, Jewelia!  We know you work hard!

Working on Duets

Jewelia loves to play the violin, but she really loves to play violin duets with her teacher.  

They have been working on a duet for a little while.  

Here is a video of their progress so far;

Jewelia Learns to Play the Ukulele!

What can't Jewelia do?

At school this year, she got a chance to be in a ukulele class.  She was really lucky because they didn't want to allow anyone younger than 4th grade, but they allowed Jewelia in as an exception because they knew she was good with music.  She picked it up really fast.

Here she is in her debut performance on ukulele with "Mr. Tambourine Man":

Christmas Performances

 Every year Jewelia goes to Maceys to play in their lobby at Christmas time.  She even gets to make some money in tips.  Sometimes she plays alone and sometimes she plays with her brothers and sister.

 

Jewelia was in the choir at her school.  She loves to sing, but this year she even got to be in the bell choir. 

Here she is playing and singing in the bell choir.  Her brother Caleb is in it on the left as well.  

For a Christmas lesson at church at their Grandma Denisey's ward, Jewelia and her brothers and sister were asked to help play a Christmas song that they could all play together.  They came up with a really pretty arrangement of O Come O Come Emmanuel that they even made a bell part for little sister Macey.  

Here is a video of them playing it at home:

The day after Christmas, Jewelia's family was asked to play in a concert downtown.  

They played the Emmanuel song again, this time live on stage:

Time for Christmas Songs!

Soon it was Christmas time again!  Jewelia loves Christmas time.  It is when she gets to play all sorts of fun Christmas songs on her violin and sing too!  

This year they asked Jewelia to play a song in a Christmas music program at church.  She learned a new song called Bring A Torch Jeanette Isabella.  

Jewelia's brother decided to do a "Musical Christmas Countdown" so she got to play in a lot of episodes.

Here she joins both her brothers for Deck the Hall ("With Balls of Holly!" says Macey);

Jewelia's little sister Macey liked it so much that she wanted to join and sing for another recording:

For another episode of Caleb's Christmas Countdown she played Still, Still, Still;

Jewelia Creates her 1st Original Violin Composition

Jewelia decided to enter her 1st Musical Composition Competition at her school this year.  She wrote her very own original violin song and it won!  She was very excited when she even got a trophy!  

She made a song called "Joyful Dance".  

Her violin was a little out of tune, but here is a recording of it:

Trouble with Violins

Jewelia traded up her violin back in September, but we just weren't happy with it.  Her last violin had such a nice bright sound to it, while this new one although it was much prettier, it just didn't have the same tone to it.  

It was October now, and while Jewelia was happy about being Rapunzel for Halloween, she wasn't happy about her violin.  Or rather, mom and dad couldn't take the awful high pitched squeakiness and scratchy cat dying sounds that this violin kept producing.  Well, it was close to Halloween, but it would be nice to not have the cat screeching noises when Halloween was over.  

So, off we went back to the violin shop.  Last time we had been so distracted by the new violin's beauty (it was so much nicer than the look of her last violin that was so previously beat up by some careless renter) that we must have missed that it didn't sound that great.  They began showing us a few more violins.  We weren't sure, so we took 3 of them up to Jewelia's violin teacher to see what she thought.  

Well, none of these were really that great either, but what do you do?  We are just renting and so we can't expect the best just yet.  We aren't looking into going broke purchasing a super expensive violin that she is going to outgrow in a year.  So, we picked what we thought was the best of the bunch, although this one seemed a bit more mellow and not as loud. 

Then we had Jewelia play some new song to record.  

Here she tries "The Entertainer":

          

There is sounded a bit muted.  That didn't seem right.

And here she plays her latest Suzuki song, "Minuet in G":

           

We still weren't sure.  It kind of sounded scratchy a bit.  Then, when going to Jewelia's next violin lesson, her teacher noticed there was this sort of rough "buzzing" sound and that there was a crack in the side that might be causing it!  Oh no!  This was not going well!  Plus, they said it was going to take over 2 weeks to even look at, so they gave us a loaner one in the meanwhile.  What a mess!  Hopefully things would work out soon!  

Jewelia Guest Stars on Sundays @ 6

A few months ago, Jewelia's older brother Caleb started a weekly webcast series called "Sundays @ 6" where he performs different arrangements of church songs each week.  

Occasionally, he has asked Jewelia to join him for a duet of a fancy church arrangement.  So far, Jewelia has been on 3 times.  Once to sing and twice to play a violin duet.  

The first time she was on, she helped sing a song.  It was in a really high key, so a bit of a reach, but she did alright.  This is "I Often Go Walking":

              

The second time Jewelia made a guest appearance was for a violin duet on "Heavenly Father Loves Me" :

           

Then, most recently she appeared again with an arrangement for violin that her brother wrote to go with a piano arrangement of "There is a Green Hill Far Away".  This one was tough because her brother just barely came up with the arrangement about an hour before he was supposed to upload his show.  So Jewelia barely had a chance to practice it through.  She still did a good enough job though.

           

After recording this particular song we realized that Jewelia's new violin really did have a kind of scratchy and hard to listen to tone that kind of irritated our ears when she played on certain strings.  So, off to the violin shop we went to see about getting a little bit better violin with a better tone.  

(Oh, if you are interested in Jewelia's brother's "Sundays @ 6" weekly webcasts, you can like him on facebook, check out his blog, or look him up on YouTube.)