Tag: performance

When Things Go Wrong

One of the unalterable truths about life is that things do not always go the way we want them to.

This past Friday evening the studio where I teach voice put on a Christmas recital. I sang in it, and some of my students sang. It’s funny how you get more nervous  about your students’ performances than your own. You want them to go so well and be such a good experience for them. This was not.

My first student is such a dear. She reminds me of myself in a lot of ways. Unfortunately I had thoughtlessly placed the microphone in the wrong spot and when she got up to sing she got a huge amount of feedback. It jangled her nerves so badly that she cried later. I was so proud of her for going on with the performance. I don’t know if I would have been so brave at her age.

My second student did fabulously, bless her, but then my third had microphone issues, and could barely be heard.

What do you do when life doesn’t go as planned? How do you help a little person learn to pick up the pieces and go on? Sometimes being a teacher is really hard. Because I’m not just teaching voice. I’m teaching these kids about life, about how to be themselves and be proud of that, and about how to be a better person. And sometimes teachers have to teach things we’re still learning ourselves.

Music is my life

As I’ve said before, I love performing. Tomorrow evening my choir is presenting a recital of largely sacred works. I am so excited to have this opportunity to perform as a group with fellow musicians. That is something I miss a lot in my solo work. Musicians are some of the awesomest people on earth in my humble (but slightly biased) opinion. I love how a person or group of people can take some words and some dots on a page and transform them into a beautiful work of art. And then when it’s done, we can do it again and it will be completely new and different every single time. Music is like the visual arts in many ways, but this is one of their differences. Whereas a painting or sculpture can be finished and hung on a wall or placed in a museum as a memorial to the artist forever, music is created again and again, and a duplicate portrayal can never exist. Maybe that’s what I love about music. I can run out of landscapes to paint, but music will never be the same.