Houston and Chopin part two. . .

I'm sending a big thank you to Bill for holding down the fort this weekend.  The kids played at the S.A.M. graduation.  They swam at a "swim meet."  Mary sang in church.  From what I have heard they were properly dressed and fed for each event.  There are some Dads who would have the kids show up for the recital in swimwear and for the swim event in dress clothes.  Bill is really with it. I watched the video of Mary and Calvin and my students who played in the 12:00 recital on Saturday.  Congratulations to everyone!

I had a great time in Houston.  I sincerely hope that the students I worked with took something special home with them.  I feel a lot of pressure at these institutes.  I know that when I take my kids to a workshop it costs a great deal of money and I invest a lot of time to prepare them.  I always hope that the teacher will be kind but honest about what we need to work on.  I want my kids to have fun, but I also want some work to get done.  I assume that most parents feel the same way and as a teacher I try to give them something solid to work on.  I try to give them some technical work on their hand position and tone, since I am often working with beginners who are still getting set up at the piano.  I also try to give them something musical to apply to the pieces, like adding rainbows, or gentle endings, or echos.  Lastly I try to show them at least one practice game that they can use at home to make practice positive and productive.

I spoke with parents at two different parent lectures.  I had help from some fellow teachers who sat in with me.  That is wonderful, as it makes the discussion more lively and we can bounce questions to someone else when appropriate.  Thanks to Chris, Angelica, Doris, Phyllis and Geraldo who all had excellent insights to share.

I played the Chopin Nocturne in C-sharp Minor on one of the recitals.  I had many compliments and I'm sure it had some beautiful moments.  I was disappointed because I did have an out of brain experience early in the piece and had to pause and start the phrase again.  I was pleased that I knew each phrase well enough to start exactly where I wanted to start.  Two things threw me.  One was that I found out that Doris had been doing teacher training on Book Seven this whole week with the Houston teachers. So they had all spent the week studying the piece I was about to play.  I think I worked through that.  I tried the piano at my lunch time and everything was fine.  When I sat down to play at 4:15, I tested the soft pedal, the una corda, and it went thump to the ground.  Totally busted. I was counting on this pedal effect for many sections of the pieces.  It was like pulling out of the rental car lot and putting the breaks on and having nothing happen.  I did panic to a certain extent. . . (By the way, the piano was lovely, who knows what happened to the pedal between 12:00 and 4:00?  It is Houston and they do have a 99% humidity level,  these things happen.)

This experience was disappointing to me for reasons beyond my fragile ego.  I get bummed when the evil nervous monster roars his roar.  Sometimes I feel like I should join a 12 step program for nervous people: "Hi my name is Sara and I suffer from debilitating performance anxiety."  Just get it on the table.  At some point having this condition causes a person to become very angry inside.  I could write the whole dang piece out on staff paper if you asked me to.  I tallied 60 perfect repetitions at home.  Why then would I go totally blank in the first 10 measures and have to conjure every ounce of concentration to collect my thoughts and enjoy playing the rest of the piece?  Insert your own profanity. . .

There are some injustices to classical music.  When I played in "Lost Wolf" the top 40 country cover band for five years we played the same set list three nights a week, week in and week out.  We played about 40 songs a night and rotated in a new song from the radio each week and dropped an old song each week.  We could be in front of 2000 fans on the jumbo-tron at 100,000 decibels through the sound system.  Nervous?  No.   My husband is a jazzer.  He was on the road with the Glenn Miller Orchestra for three years.  They performed 300 concerts a year.  Same big band book every night.  Nervous?  No.

Fast forward to grad-school.  Work on a 60 minute program of solo piano repertoire for 18 months.  Get to perform it in the auditorium for the faculty.  Once.  For a grade.  It is no wonder some of us go psycho.

Perhaps this is God's way of giving me compassion toward my students and to never take for granted what courage it takes to get up in front of an audience and perform a piece from memory.   As for me, I know what I have to do.  I have been down this road before and come out whole again.  I need to perform more than once or twice a year, and not just at my cousin's wedding. That is the only way.  Success leads back to success.  Eventually your heart stops racing and your hands can only sweat so much and your brain gets annoyed with the stress and moves on.  I'm excited that I am subbing for the church choir for the rest of this season, that will give me a chance to play in front of people every Sunday for at least a few months.  Enough about that.

Monday was a treat.  I got to spend the day with Casey my first grade friend.  We got a pedicure, I got my springtime flower on my big toe.  We got to chit chat about nothing in particular for 12 hours.  Got to eat at Chick-fil-a.  Very therapeutic.  Love you, babe!

Thanks to the teachers in Houston for inviting me!  Especially Carolyn for choosing me. Thanks to Yelena for hosting me and sharing the Houston contest repertoire.  Thanks to Phyllis for driving me everywhere.  Thanks to Doris,  for well. . . everything I know!  Being with you all  is a total blessing for me, and I hope you will invite me again.