And the last week of school is about to begin

Tomorrow morning is the last opportunity to audition for the placements in D's two school bands, wind ensemble and jazz band. For weeks he's been telling me that he's unhappy with his lack of progress on the saxophone this year, and so we've planned for him to take lessons this summer, but today he decided that he would probably be happier not to do jazz band at all. He'd been looking forward to having his best buddy join him in it next year, but that friend decided he's happier being the jazz pianist for the elite choir group, and it's one or the other. But there are other reasons, especially the part about getting up at 6 a.m. -- he gets an extra hour of sleep if he just does wind ensemble. And his personal standards for musical performance are getting pretty high, given his success with the clarinet, so he's continually frustrated about the sax.

So this is reasonable (although it's too bad that we've invested in a nice saxophone). He'll focus only on the clarinet, which makes sense since he's in the Youth Symphony now. I'm hoping (and so is that jazz pianist friend of his) that he'll still do the jazz camp in July; they said he was quite welcome to play the clarinet there. It's really a pity that his high school doesn't allow jazz clarinet anymore...