Sweet Melody

I think you could call all of our children muscians. Music has played a big part in our family. We toured for many years as the Klemp Family Singers, and recorded three record albums during that time. (That was still the day of albums and tapes. We recently had the recordings changed over to digital, but never actully cut cd's from the converted recordings). All of the kids play a musical instrumant, and as a band director, Peter plays almost all mucical instrumants.

They did a lot of musical theater, mostly as actors, but sometiomes as musicians in the pit orchestra. Sarah just turned down a chance to do a show. (It's a little tricky to fit that in with three pre-schoolers.)

All of them took piano lessons.  (We had seven kids in piano lessons at one time one year. The only thing more expensive was car insurance. We always paid more in car insurance each year than we paid for the cars themselves.) They had  variable levels of success on the piano. (Phil is a church organist, choir director and teaches music in the school.)

Most of our children play the guitar. (Matt plays an especially mean guitar). All of them played in the high school band. Phil (trumpet), Pete (drums), Matt (trombone), Steve, (alto sax and bass guitar), Paula, (flute), Marcus, (drums), Anna, (clarinet) and Sarah (bari sax), and most of them played in the jazz band (or sang in choir) as well.

The boys even had their own band, Clockwyz. They played at youth gatherings, got hired for a couple of proms, and even did one wedding dance. They could never figure out why the bars would not book them until they took a look at their picture. What a bunch of baby faces! Both Paula and Anna currently sing back up vocals in a local band, and in their chruch praise bands, and Sarah plays in her church bell choir.

There was always music in our home....and then they grew up, and left. We have a piano in the garage, several unplugged keyboards and a lot of electronics in the basement, but it is pretty quiet around here now.

I still sing a lot of hymns (a habit that goes way back to childhood), and Paul often has some classical music going in his study, but it just is not the same.

I miss the music.

Katherine