MN Orchestra concert part one

I saw in the newspaper that the MN Orchestra was scheduled to play at a small town less than an hour from us. Tickets were $15 for adults, $5 for students. There was no age on the student price, so we e-mailed and asked for an age. It can cost more than that to go to see a movie with your whole family, so we were prepared to splurge since the MN Orchestra was coming so near us. We told them the ages of our boys in the e-mail. I was planning on Ram and I taking turns in the lobby with Lamb 3 and in the auditorium with Lamb 1 and 2.
Soon after we sent the e-mail, we received a reply that all 3 were students. Before we bought the tickets, but a few days after we received the e-mail that all 3 were students, we received another e-mail. This e-mail said that children age 6 and above were welcome to attend with an adult. So that put us in the position that only Lamb 1 was allowed. I wrote this e-mail back.

This is very disappointing. I understand not bringing the 3 year old, but I do not understand not bringing the 5 year old. We homeschool and we have studied instruments, composers, and orchestras. We have studied this in books and listened to CDs, but nothing can compare to going to hear the orchestra live. Our 7 and 5 year old knew what we were talking about when we told them we were going to listen to Wagner and Strauss and Tchaikovsky. We were thrilled to learn the Minnesota Orchestra was coming to our rural area. We have lived in a big city before and the biggest thing I miss now that I live in a rural area is that we can not attend concerts.


I do not know what we are going to do about buying tickets, we will probably not be attending at all, because our 5 year old would be so disappointed that his brother got to go and he didn’t. Our 5 year old has sat through a church service without leaving once that was longer than this 2 hour concert.


I am the most disappointed that this information was not posted on your website and that you did not tell us this immediately when we e-mailed. In the meantime we told our boys that we would be attending and they will be very disappointed.

Then I received another e-mail back that both Lamb 1 and 2 were welcome to attend and they hoped that we chose to attend. They apologized for the misunderstanding on the website. This was the director of the small town arts program. I'm sure she never expected parents to ask to bring a 5 year old on a school night. She had to work with the MN Orchestra and go by their guidelines.

So we talked to Lamb 1 and 2. We told them what the concert would be like (as much as you can describe that to boys that have never attended a concert before). We told them they would have to miss ECFE to attend the concert because they were at the same time. Lamb 1 wanted to attend the concert. Lamb 2 wanted to go to ECFE with Lamb 3.

Since tickets were only $5 we bought 2 student tickets in case Lamb 2 would change his mind. He didn't. So Ram took Lamb 2 and 3 to ECFE and Ewe took Lamb 1 to the concert last night.

This post will be continued to talk about the concert that Ewe and Lamb 1 attended.