The Other American Idol

Last night was Dorene's spring concert at Brown Intermediate Center. In addition to the choir singing a few numbers, Dorene started something last year that continued this year . . .the Bison Idol show (Brown's mascot are the Bison). Yes, it's an American Idol clone complete with it's own Ryan, Randy, Paula and Simon.

This year contained a wide range of diverse acts. You had:

• A rock guitarist.
• A dance routine featuring four African American girls.
• A drum duet.
• A girl from Africa singing in French and also rapping in French!
• Two Latinas singing a Selena song in Spanish.
• A dance duo featuring one black and one caucasian girl (that really brought down the house).
• . . .and many more.

The final act of the night was a fifth grade boy singing "Train up a child in the way of the Lord." This kid had his own "dog pound" in attendance complete with signs and loud cheering. Even without the extra support, he was clearly the crowd favorite and won, deservedly so.

Yes, this is a public school, and yes, the song he sang was overtly Christian. Besides that, the choir closed with a rendition of "Joyful, Joyful." But, don't expect any lawsuits about the content of this concert. Dorene has included gospel songs in her concerts for years and years and it's never been an issue.

If you've ever been to a middle school concert, I guarantee you've never seen one like the ones my wife puts on. These are full-fledged performances that are very entertaining and very good. The gymnasium was completely packed, with overflow crowd spilling out of the bleachers and sitting on the floor. Bottom line, Dorene is good! She gives her kids a great deal of ownership, letting them decide many aspects of the program, from stage design to choreography, to the songs they are going to sing. With that kind of ownership comes a great deal of pride in the program, so they aren't just showing up to do their concert and get it over with. They truly have fun out there and you can see it on their faces.

You can also see it in the annual increase in kids wanting to take choir. Dorene makes taking choir a pretty cool thing to do. She's not training these kids to be classical musicians and to go out listening to Bach and Beethoven on their iPods. No, she's taking this moment in time when she has them to give them an experience where they indeed do learn a lot about music but also have a lot of fun with it so that even if they never move on with music, they at least have an appreciation of it and some memorable times.

Yes, I'm a proud husband here!

As for the real American Idol, we went out to eat and didn't get back until about 10:30. I had recorded it. I rewound to the last song where Taylor and Kathryn sang, "I've Had the Time of My Life." Too bad Kathryn didn't sing and have stage presence like this during the competition, she might have won. It was very obvious Taylor was going to win, which he did. They didn't give the vote totals this time, the first time that's ever happened. I'm figuring it was Taylor in a runaway.