Since we have returned back to Australia, I have managed to be asked quite a few times to prepare education projects for students ranging from primary school through to the tertiary... and it is quite a new experience as this is something that I've not really had to orgnanise and prepare myself. Usually, I've just taken part as a tutor or a teacher, and so I've not really had to do more that just show up, inspire and share my knowledge and experience. That is definitely quite easy to do, and something that I really enjoy doing!

However, when you are the sole person or the person organising the materials and organisation of the workshop or masterclass... all of a sudden you need to start thinking about other things like the choosing of pieces that everyone can work with.

... and that is quite a new skill that I need to learn! It is definitely quite a great deal more challenging than I had thought... after all, I'm used to just playing and choosing music for fellow professional musicians... and in those cases, I just choose what I want to play and program it... and people just have to learn it and be capable! Well, most of the time, I will choose people that can just play anything... so, I just don't need to think about anything like limitations!

... but when you are choosing music for students, even tertiary students, well... the limitations are real and a good deal more limiting than I had realised! Plus, given the interesting idea of grouping students by age rather than ability, you can get quite a HUGE range of abilities in the same ensemble!

Plus, the music that I play doesn't tend to include the full range of symphonic instruments and all of that... and so, there is a lot of arranging that needs to be done. Plus, people these days don't read a whole variety of clefs and have instruments in various different tunings (even modern classical professional musicians don't do that anymore...), and so that means even the "regular" parts need to be transcribed into a form that the students can read!

So, that will be this weekend's work... I will do those things, so that the workshop will run smoothly... of course, it is a bit of a pain in the arse with an arts funding application looming... but it is what needs to be done for the students to get the most out of the workshop as possible.

... my only hope is that at least a few of them will bother to look at the music ahead of time, so that I'm not wasting time helping them learn notes and instead I'm able to focus on the specialisation of music that I'm trying to expose them to!

But.... I'm not particularly hopeful that that will be the case, but even if they haven't really learnt their parts, for this workshop, their teachers are taking part as well... so, I'll be able to focus on the things that I want to and have everyone scrambling to keep up. Actually, I'm more of the opinion that if we push the students, they will often rise up and perform better than if we coddle too much!

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