Hans Grim

My youngest daughter Madeleine took her third trip to the emergency room today. I discovered Maddie being consoled in the arms of her mother and was the first to notice she was bleeding quite a bit from the back of her head. Apparently, she was riding her sister’s back and they slipped. Maddie hit the back of her head on the brick fire place and it left a 7mm puncture wound on her scalp!! Ouch!

We were able to slow the bleeding down and my son Max and I rushed off to Cook Children’s Medical Center to have her checked out.

Madeleine was pretty upset initially, but by the time we arrived at the hospital she was all bounce and smiles again.

She was a model patient for the triage staff allowing them to inspect her and take various measurements. (Our little 2 year old weighed 13.1 kilograms.)

Max had come along to help entertain and comfort Maddie and he was wonderful. They both darted around the ER like kids at Disneyland. The triage staff ordained Maddie with a bright pink head bandage which she loved. You can see from the pictures she had a blast.

When the doctor saw her the doctor asked if she had hit her noggin and Maddie said, “No I hit my head.”. Maddie charmed everyone there and even though they sent two nurses in to administer a staple – Maddie was completely at ease in my arms and didn’t even seem to notice the staple being applied.

Max was brave too. He was very concerned about the whole thing and even cried at first when we were heading out and when I told him what they were going to have to do. But when I told him he needed to be strong for his sister – he sucked up the tears and was strong as steal.

It’s no fun seeing your little ones hurt, but it sure shows you how much they love each other and how strong they can be when things get harried.

Today I slept till noon. When I got up, Mary and I moved all the furniture out of the living room and ripped up the carpet. Kinda fun!

Then she left to spend the night with her friends in Dallas. I went to Home Depot to get some tools/supplies for the floor. Then off to Betty’s class. Not as much fun as usual tonight. I’ve gotten spoiled playing the Steinway at the Modern. Hard to compare.

Now to bed. Missing my children tonight. They are very cute after all.

Just got home from taking Maddie to San Antonio. She was SO cute. Hard to leave her.

I stopped by East Dallas to see a man about some floors. Gonna be fun.

Very sleepy.

Last night Max said I needed to keep my journal entry shorter – so I will attempt to do so…

I played at church this morning and enjoyed watching my three kids sing and dance along with the other Ridglea UMC kids.

Afterwards we went home and had turkey sandwiches, took a nap and then I dropped Rose and Max off with our good friends – The Hills. They will be spending ts week with them – attending their VBS and taking swim lessons.

I can’t wait to read Max’s journal!

Then I had dinner with Maddie and Mary at Terra in Fort Worth. We decided it would make the best sense for me to drive Maddie to San Antonio tonight. She will be spending a week with her grandmother in San Antonio.

Mary and I hope to redo the floor in our living room. Big project!!

I’m sleepy. Goodnight.

July 24 10:19

Inspired by my son – I am beginning to journal my daily activities. Today I woke around ten to the screams if my three children hounding my wife, Mary, for milk or a snack or who knows what. 

I rolled out of bed and took a shower.  Today I have agreed to record a short bit of incidental music for an independent film. No pay, but the allure of being listed in the IMDB online. I’m just vain enough to want to donate my time to that end.

I showed up at the TCU radio studios to find an upright bass player’ a drummer, the director of the film and his assistant.  The assistant had brought his little 64 key unweighted keyboard for me to play on. It looked dinky and at least a decade old, and I regretted not bringing my own to the session.  I grumbled about the poor quality, but it turned out to be fine.

I’ve found over the years that the better a player you are the less the instrument matters. Which is sad since the better you get the better an instrument you can afford, but – oh well.

Anyway the director played something he had in mind on his guitar.  His assistant remarked that it sounded just like something from Twin Peaks.  The drum set, keyboard and bass were all set up, but no micas or headphones had been hooked up and we had to wait for some other interview to finish before we could setup to record.  

It was probably a full forty-five minutes before we were finially hooked up and ready to go.  Then we took 75 minutes to record a thirty second clip of a song, which a singer would be adding lyrics and her voice to.  It was really fun – of course I wish I had a meatier bit of playing to conquer, but it was fun all the same to be working with a couple musicians to create something new.

In the end it sounded perfect for an Indy short film.  I was happy with it.

Then I used an app on my iPhone called Yelp to find a yummy place to eat.  Sonny’s Cafe – I think.  A Vietnamese place.  I enjoyed their shrimp pad tai.

Then I came home to find my son reading a book he’d read before – so I promised him I would take him to buy some new books to read.

I rescued my wife from Rosie who was keeping her firm taking a nap.

The three of us retreat to the couch for a while and I watched YouTube clips of Bear Grylls from Man vs. Wild.  I really love that show!

Mary took off to go to the second night of her show – The Full Monty – in Addison.  I’m hugely jealous of her on this one – I really love this show.

I went into the front yard and spent forty-five minutes wrestling with my paint sprayer.  Finally I was able to get it working.  I put the first coat of paint on my daughter’s bunk beds.  We bought a wood stained set and thought it would be easy to paint them white.  This has turned into an ordeal.  I’m not a big fan of painting.

Anyway – once I cleaned up I came in and wanted to take the kids somewhere fun and they needed to eat was well.  So I bought tickets for Despicable Me in 3D at the Hulen Movie tavern.

We hustled into the car and slipped into the theatre, but we couldn’t find any seats, so I asked if we could have a refund. The manager actually gave me a refund and let us go to see Toy Story 3 for free.  He really didn’t have to do that. That was pretty cool. 

It was a great movie. I especially enjoyed when buzz light year gets flipped into Spanish mode.  Very funny.  Also – I have always though George Clooney was the voice of Buzz.  Apparently not.  Funny

Afterward, I told Max we needed to go home and get the girls in bed and that we would have to go online and order him some new books.  He didn’t like that – and I didn’t want to go back in my word – so we went to Barnes and Noble.

Rose and Maddie picked up almost every book in the place and handed them to me. They screamed and frolicked like banshees, but we were finally able to find max a couple of books.

He’s draw to informative encyclopedic books – which is great, but I feel it is more important for him to read fictional accounts – novels.

So we found him a couple that he liked the sound of and we bought him a diary – one with a lock on it.  He began writing as I began writing this – but I guess I had a lot more to say.

well – goodnight.

Hans

The second show I ever Musical Directed was West Side Story. In retrospect – that was like a whole year of college training crammed into a 4 week period. My wife had been cast as the lead in a Granbury Opera House production. The score is written for a 30 piece orchestra and is among the most challenging musical scores to conduct.

The Granbury Opera house budget allowed for me and 2 additional musicians. I hired my best friend Wes Griffin for percussion and my brother Evan for Guitar, Keyboard, Trombone and additional percussion as needed.

It remains one of my all time favorite productions and I would never have made it through without Evan and Wes’ help and the Directors – David Swan and Kate Swan.

However, one story though sticks with me to this day as a cautionary tale. It involves a particularly tricky dance number in the show entitled “Cool”.

To set the scene – In Granbury there were 7 shows a week – and the show ran for 4 weeks so we got plenty of opportunity to think about the music. One Friday afternoon in about the second week, my wife mentioned casually that the dancers thought the tempo on “Cool” was getting a little slow. So my brother Evan, Wes and I sat down a little early from dinner and dialed up the metronome marking from the score. Sure enough – it was quite a bit brighter than we had ever played it. We tried playing it at that tempo and were delighted that we could even keep up. After two weeks of playing the show – we now found ourselves able to play it much faster than we originally could. So I set the metronome on my stand and when Riff cued the song I counted the piece off in the prescribed tempo.

We had a blast! It was so much fun flying through that tune as Bernstein had originally intended (well – with 10% of the music personnel of course).

Well – at intermission we went backstage expecting to hear how great we had played it and how much better the tempo was. WRONG! The dancers it seemed did not have anywhere near as much fun as we musicians did. Apparently they nearly flew right off the stage at our brighter brisk tempo and were absolutely furious with us. It seems funny now, but at the time – you’d think we’d set fire to the set as they were dancing on it. We had no idea it might cause them bodily harm. It was pretty tense for the rest of that week. The cast took it VERY personally.

And a very green musical director learned an important lesson about tempos!

When this show was produced at the Out of the Loop Festival at WaterTower in Addison, it sold out very quickly and was almost immediately slated to return for a second run at that venue. That extended run sold out almost every night as well – often with patrons attending for a second or even third time. One well-known critic wrote that she sneaked out of a different production and into ours at intermission because she enjoyed it so much the first time.

The question for me is – Why is this little show such a joy to watch? Don’t get me wrong.  The book is hilarious and the music is a blast to listen to, but what is it about this show that entices audience members to buy another ticket and bring their friends? (Trust me producers would love an answer to this question too.)

For me, it’s a one-two punch of a couple elements that catapult this show and others in the genre to the top of my must-see list. First, the audience can identify with the characters almost immediately and second the fourth wall has been removed completely so that the audience is included in the show.

Whether we want to admit it or not – many of us don’t have to wander too far out on the limbs of our family tree to find a Norbert, Jeanie or even a Duke.  These representations make great comedy, but the humor comes from the reality of recognizing our own lives in them.  Director, Chris Robinson, was emphatic that the actors’ characters should not turn into caricatures.  They are real people with huge “Jerry Springer-style problems. We laugh, but we also empathize with their basic emotions.

A great friend of mine recently summed up her almost 60 years of success as an actress in one minute.  This is what she said, to the best I can recall. “Audiences come to the theatre to see a reflection of themselves in the performers. It doesn’t matter what is being portrayed. If you can find a common thread between the character you are portraying and the guy or gal in the seat watching – then you’ve got that person by the heart and you can take them anywhere.”  At its heart, I think that’s what brings people back. This show provides an honest accessible reflection of our own struggles.

The other key element in the endearment of this show is that the “fourth wall” is torn down from the very first line of the show. Sara Shelby Martin’s character welcomes audience members and continues to acknowledge them throughout the show.

I was always taught that actors “breaking the fourth wall” was taboo and a desperate act. However, although it can easily be abused and misused, I feel it really meets a need for audiences to be seen and noticed. TV and film can’t do this like live theatre can. It is that two-way communication that separates live theatre from other popular entertainment formats.

The real art for an actor is to see and acknowledge the audience by showing them a raw glimpse of their soul, rather than speaking directly to them.  But we can’t always achieve such a lofty goal – particularly in a trailer park.  So why not follow Pickles’ example and just pass them a moon-pie from your bra and ask ‘em to sit back and enjoy.

Perhaps, this is all a little too over-thought for a show about seven crazy trail park residents… but you may just find yourself sneaking back for an encore performance without knowing what it was that made you a repeat “attender”. I hope these ramblings will help bring things into focus so you can rationalize coming back with your friends to visit us in Starke, Florida again and again before the end of the run.

-Hans Grim, Music Director

We recently took a new volley of headshots.  Can you help us decide which one best represents her?

The Texas Christian University Vocal Jazz Ensemble will perform a free recital, Sunday, April 11 at 7;30PM in TCU’s PepsiCo Recital Hall

I recently made a recording of the group in rehearsal and it’s really fun to listen to.  The first one is absolutely, hands down my favorite song ever.  If you like vocal jazz – consider coming to the concert – April 11th.  I’ll be at the piano.

Here’s the audio:

And So It Goes

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She Goes Shopping for Gucci

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Slap That Bass

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I have been incrediblly and unabashedly envious of Allison Whetsel Ward’s Vocal Jazz Singers.  What a talented bunch of singers.  It has been a real highlight and honor to work with them this year.

Here are some pictures of my kids hunting for eggs at Ridglea UMC.