June 26-30, 2000:Our First Summercore in Europe

Videos from Friday June 30th in Brussels

Dorothy Blake who came to Summercore in 1998 arranged for us to come to our first Summercore in Europe, the week of June 26-30 at her school, the International School of Brussels in Belgium. On the final day, she asked our group to attend a music recital being put on by the "Cool Music" summer group. I took the digital camera with me and was stunned to see what they what they were performing!


Movie 1: The musical group is warming up with dozens of instruments. There are about 50-75 people in the audience, 22 of the teachers from Summercore and many parents of the students in the Cool Music musical troupe.
Movie 2: They start to play a familiar tune. I lean over to Lynne and remark that I cannot believe that "Kumbaya My Lord" is known here in Brussels, even though many of us in America have grown up with it as a camp song. I figure that perhaps the kids from the Cool Music group are Americans and that this was one tune they all knew. I was totally naive and had no idea what was about to unfold!
Movie 3: The musical director announces that there will be a special guest solo. I see Dorothy Blake walk to the front. Still, I am "clueless in Brussels." Finally, as Dorothy starts singing, I realize what is about to happen. Oh Lord, OCD!
Movie 4: It turns out that Dorothy photostatted my song that I had e-mailed her at one time. Everyone in the audience had a copy. The song had the musical notes and chords that Bob Lasher and I had recorded. We had even done a practice take where the two of us and Ellie Newman played it on guitars. But I could not believe that here I was in Brussels watching OCD My Lord being performed with audience accompaniment!
Movie 5: And to top it off, one of the participants -- Christian, with his marvelous French accent -- did a wonderful techno-quickie presentation on computer literacy, first with no audience.
Movie 6: And then Christian was ready to take on an audience!