Eeeep... there is nothing more nerve-racking than having students go up for a concert assessment. Honestly, I find it much more nerve-racking than doing a concert for myself.... at least for a personal concert, I am able to just do what I need to do in the lead up and during the concert. And anything that goes funny is just a personal indictment...

However, for a student... you are training them up over a semester to a final presentation point, a concert or a public assessment. You know that they should do well, and that they have the capacity to really do great things... but you are never really sure if you have prepared them well enough to deal with the rigours of trying to perform at peak level whilst on display in public. You can tell them all the tricks and little techniques, but in the end, every musician needs to develop their own way of handling the fight or flight response.

It doesn't really help that in the music training at university, we don't really talk about it that much... and everyone looks fine on the outside, which leads you to think that you are the only person in all of history that is suffering from stage fright! I know that there was a period when that was the case for me, and yet everyone would tell me how calm I looked!

So, my students have a concert tonight... I have helped them through the last 10 or so weeks, and we had a last run through this morning. They are in pretty good shape, and they have taken quite well to the different ideas of Early Music in comparison to the traditional Classical ideas. During the run, we worked on some small tweaks... but in general, they are holding up really well, and I think that they will perform to potential or above!

I'm glad that they qualified for the public concert instead of the in-house assessment... a proper concert has a better atmosphere for performing, whereas an in-house assessment... well, you really feel the weight of assessment over a performance. A performance is where you try to present a entertaining diversion for the audience, and that often means that your mind is focused AWAY from little technical details... In an assessment, you are more focused on details and technique instead of interpretation and performance, and that can ironically make you LESS capable of overcoming these obstacles.

Well, didn't end up posting this post before my students played... I had a couple of lessons to give, so I had to stop writing and then went straight to their concert. And they did great! Sure, there were little things that were a little astray... but these things happen to all of us, and they made it through and gave a decent performance! I was pretty damn proud! Ahhhh... all my worrying and nervousness was for nothing!

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