Christmas Piano Recital

December 21st 2019

I decided to have my Christmas piano recital at a retirement home, for a couple of reasons: so my students aren't always performing at the same place, and to give them an opportunity to serve the community. Variety and new faces and places are always good for a performer. I found the closest retirement home that I could find that actually responded (surprisingly quickly, I am grateful to add) to my inquires about having a piano recital there. I typically have my students get to work on their recital songs approximately 6 weeks before the recital. I am pleased to say that all of my students worked hard this last recital on all of their songs, even the 1 students that wasn't able to make it.

The day finally came, I was of course rushed and flushed and overall mildly panicky.  I had prepared a couple pieces from The Nutcracker to play because I enjoy playing for my own recitals, it forces me to keep up on my piano learning, playing, and performing skills. Plus I believe its good for the students to hear their teacher play. So knowing I had to perform and conduct (i.e. speaking in front of people) made me a little anxious, but this wasn't the first time and certainly not the last, that I would have to do that stuff so I sucked it up and did what I needed to do.  As if performing and conducting weren't stressful enough, I had to delay the start time of the recital (even though I adamantly told everybody to be there 15 minutes early so we could start on time) because there were no residents there for us to play for.  I wasn't going to start until there were at least a few.  What would be the point of holding a recital at a retirement home if there were no residents there to hear it? I might as well just hold it at my own home if that's the case.  So I waited for 15 minutes past before we finally started, as we had a few residents that eventually trickled in.  Turns out, they were at a Bingo game.  If the activities director would have warned me that the residents would possibly still be in a bingo game at the start of the recital, I would have told everyone to come later and started at 2:30 instead.  And, much to my annoyance, the activities director didn't even show her face until 2:13 for a few seconds and then promptly left.  The only redeeming act of the activities director is that she did have everything I requested set up.  I do believe that will be the last time we perform there.

The recital itself went smoothly enough, except Ian decided to play every Christmas song in his entire book, even the ones that he had never laid eyes on. Ian kept playing, and playing, and playing. I could feel myself start to sweat by the time he was going on song number 6 and I was worried that the audience was getting impatient. But there was not much to be done other than wait it out (honestly I did try to get him off the bench), I didn't want to wrestle the poor, sweet kid of the piano in front of everybody, that would have looked even worse. He finally finished with a hearty applause.  Next time I'll plan a little more carefully--I'll limit Ian to 2 or 3 songs and he'll know ahead of time exactly which songs he'll be playing. I just did not expect him to play the entire book at the recital! The rest of the students played well, we had a couple boys refuse to bow, other than that it went just fine.  I played at the end like I always do.  My performance was good but not great. I was just so glad to have the recital and my performance done and out of the way so I could enjoy my Christmas break! After the recital we all enjoyed some treats that the families brought (I also brought some sugar cookies that everyone assumed were lemon because I drizzled them with a faintly yellow frosting Dec. 21

Ian and his many, many performances

Allison

Lydia

My Elisa.  She is usually pretty good about getting her songs performance-ready, but this year she just didn't seem to care as much.

Grant.  I forgot to get a picture of his brother, Carson, who played next.

Camden

My Gabe.  He worked hard and did a great job!

Hannah

Dance of the Reed Flutes and Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy.

My and my students.