Festival day

Tomorrow (or I guess technically today) is the music festival.

I have to be at the hotel at 8:40am and I’ll be there pretty much all day long. From there, I have to go to the campground.

Only one of my students ended up going, but this is the first time I’ll have any of my kids performing in it, so I’m really excited to see him play! He’s doing two piano solos and two voice solos. I hope he does well, because I think if he doesn’t it’ll be a blow to his confidence.

He’s really talented, but sometimes he’d rather do things his ‘own way’ instead of listening or reading the music. But hey, that’s not always a bad thing. Sometimes it’s good to have your own personal flare.

So basically, this is what happens at the festival. You have a group of kids who all play the same instrument (there’s competitions for piano, voice, guitar and drums) and who are all in the same grade and around the same age. Classes usually have at the most around ten to twelve students but some classes are a lot smaller. Each participant plays their solo, is marked by an adjudacator (all of them have a lot of experience) and then the top three scores win a trophy. Everyone gets a ribbon and a score sheet with comments.

Usually you go into two categories. So for piano, my student is doing pop (where he’s playing Castle on a Cloud) and traditional (where he’s playing Light & Blue, from the lesson book). I don’t know what he’s singing in the voice categories, but I’m going to try my hardest to go watch those.

The festival is run voluntarily by a few conservatories in the area. Many (not all) of the teachers work there for the weekend to make sure things run smoothly. The instruments (for the most part) are taken from our conservatory, so that’s even extra work. I didn’t help take the stuff over (because I was at work) and I can’t work there Sunday, but I’ll be there most of the day tomorrow helping out the judge.

It’s going to be a long day.

The festivals are always really fun, but I mean, you can only hear ‘Little Chug Boat’ or ‘Irish Wedding Dance’ so many times before you want to throw a brick at the piano.

I’m going to try to tape my student’s performance! So hopefully I can put the sound of him playing on here (not the video for obvious reasons).

So everyone reading, wish him luck! He’s awesome and it really doesn’t matter if he gets a prize or not. The point is he did it and went. He was apprehensive at going at first, but I hope it’ll be a really good experience for him. It’s always nice to have a place where you can show other people your skill, especially after working so hard for it.

But, on the plus side he’s definitely a little performer.