2024, Gatherings, Kids, Music

The Recital

27 Comments

My neighborhood has kids in it.  This may not seem remarkable to you but for several years, there were no kids, YA being the youngest of the previous bunch.  But now there are four girls and two boys spread among four households.  It’s fabulous.

Just next door are Minnie and Marie (names changed to protect the innocent) who are 9 and 5.  Both a bit on the dramatic side (compared to YA at that age anyway) but very entertaining.   As with most kids these days, they have lots of activities; both their parents are music teachers, so music and dance are pretty high up on the list.

Last summer Minnie did a drama camp for a couple of weeks and at the end they put on the musical “The Little Mermaid”.  At one point Minnie invited me to see the show although I’m not sure she really expected my attendance.  YA and I both went and had a fun evening.  Lots of little kids playing undersea critters, including Minnie who was a crab.  She sang and danced in three numbers.  Both her folks were extremely grateful that YA and I attended.

So it wasn’t a surprise when Saturday afternoon, as I was heading to pick up an order at Target, Minnie called me over to the fence and asked me if I wanted to go to her piano recital.  I said “Sure, when is it?” to which she replied “2:30”.  As in 2:30 that same day, in fact, just 45 minutes from right then.  Yikes.  I told her I’d try my best.  Luckily not too much traffic to Target and back however I did need to change as I was wearing the dirty shorts and t-shirt that I had been gardening in earlier in the day.  I never changed so fast in my life.  If you’d been my other neighbor looking out the window at 2:20, you would have seen me pulling a shirt over my tank top as I was heading across my backyard to the car!  But I made it with a couple of minutes to spare (music school is just 5 minutes from the house – phew)!

It was a typical recital.  A couple of kids for whom this was their first public performance.  Mostly pianists but there was one guitarist and two violinists.  I would say most of the kids were between 5 and 10, although the last girl to play the violin was probably 13 or 14 (she was very good).  Several of the students had the teachers doing a complimentary part with them so no one seemed too nervous and nobody flubbed anything noticeable.  Minnie played a piece called “My Dream” and did a nice job.  I really enjoyed clapping and whooping it up for her and all the other little reciters. 

Minnie’s musical this summer is “Annie”.  I can’t wait.

Any memorable recitals for you?

27 thoughts on “The Recital”

  1. Both my daughters took piano lessons when they were young. My older daughter dreaded the recitals. At one, she wore a handmade sign on her back that said “no clapping”.

    Before another recital, she was messing around outside with a skateboard, fell down and broke her arm, thus escaping her performance.

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    1. I wasn’t crazy about recitals either. One of my piano teachers had little informal recitals once a month in her parlor – that helped a little. Another piano teacher told a bunch of her students to remember that “nobody in the audience can play your piece”. A lie to be sure but I didn’t think of her saying that more than once!

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  2. My daughter’s recital piece. Her teachers were NDSU professors and they had their students perform at the Reineke Fine Arts building in which I had just recently installed floor covering.

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    2. I was asked to play this in 5th grade at the end of a monthly assembly as the students trooped out and back to their classes. I lost count of how many times through I ended of playing it but it was at least four or five. I still think of that day every time I hear this piece.

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    3. ari just turned 6 and told his piano teacher he is ready for fur elise

      my guitar group guys are involved in an open mic night at one of the breweries up in the Plymouth area and invited me to be a part of that so I came up and played don’t think twice the boxer and Mr. tambourine man that’s the closest thing to a recital I’ve done in a while my kids all did recitals starting with Devon who did piano and saxophone. His voice makes me cry. My daughter a percussion to also played piano. Spencer played cello and trumpet in addition to performing in theater and the musical group, but his main performances were in sports karate swimming baseball basketball football , my girls both played piano. Olivia did oboe and vocals and Emma did trumpet and guitar me. She’s an incredible introvert. , my girls both played piano. Olivia did oboe and vocals and Emma did trumpet and guitar. She’s an incredible introvert but when she gets up on stage with her guitar and her microphone, she sings like it’s the most comfortable thing in the world that makes me cry too.

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  3. Daughter had lots of recitals as a Suzuki violin student. Both she and son had ballet recitals. Son was the only boy in his dance school, and studied dance for 12 years. Now, as a 6’5″, 250 lb guy he can still do a nice pas de chat down the sidewalk.

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    1. How far did you have to travel to find Suzuki lessons and dance lessons for your kids? That must have been no small think in N. Dakota.

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      1. One benefit of having a boy in ballet for so long is that it crushed any illusion and mystery about girls, being around them when they were sweaty, smelly, and crabby after rehearsals.

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  4. Rise and Shine, Baboons,

    My son played piano in many recitals and always performed well. Me? Not so much. My clarinet recitals and competitions were a series of small disasters. That combined with a hostile teacher added up to developing performance anxiety. However, after Inderol (generic is Propranolol) was available, I was able to use that to block the adrenaline rush and treat the anxiety. Then I resumed performing, but not in recitals.

    When I was a high school freshman there was a recital for the kids preparing for contests and All State auditions. We had a terrific music program, so there were a number of impressive performances. When it was my turn I started to play, I was doing just fine when I had to sneeze in the middle of it, then my nose started to run copiously. I finally had to stop, walk off and get a kleenex, blow my nose, then come back to finish. My friends gave me all kinds of grief about this. I was so embarrassed, but I could not control these involuntary physical responses.

    What I now know was that the auditorium was dusty. All the activity stirred it up. I am very allergic to dust but at the time, no one took my allergies seriously which caused me all kinds of health problems, including an extended episode of walking pneumonia that lasted 6 weeks and left scars on my lungs.

    There also was a teacher who was quite hostile to all his students. He used shame and intimidation to manage himself and the students. He would stare us down during practices and contests which caused me terrible anxiety. His approach also caused many of us, his students, a lot of difficulty and increased my anxiety. The teacher got fired and moved on. Looking back, I think he was a closeted gay man who must have had a miserable life in a tiny Iowa town.

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    1. oh my goodness, JacAnon! Your experiences are so much like my own! I was allergic to dust too. It just wasn’t a thing when we were kids. I have asthma as a result!

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    3. I’ve never understood how people can stay in professions for which they are clearly not suited. Think about how miserable he must be ALL the time.

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  5. I think I was in just one piano recital as a kid, and I’ll never forget it, but the details are hazy now. I must have gotten through Anitra’s Dance (Grieg) OK, but I’m sure it wasn’t perfect. I just remember the relief when it was done.

    I think that was a good idea of VS’ teacher to have those mini-recitals periodically… a chance to try it out without as much pressure.

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  6. The other difference between all my various recitals and Minnie’s recital was the sheet music. I always had to memorize all my pieces but on Saturday, all the kids had their music to aid them.

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  7. In 8 years of piano lessons, there must have been at least 6 recitals but I only remember three. My very first one was held in December and I think I played the chorus of Jingle Bells on one hand – not too stressful. In a junior high recital I had the hardest song (a simplified version of a Hungarian Rhapsody) and was last on the program. That went well but the teacher also paired me up with one of her other students (Stanley, one year older than me) for a duet of Tea For Two. We played fine but I thought Stan was weird and was embarrassed to sit next to him. Turns out he played clarinet (like me) and we ended sitting next to each other for two years in high school band – and he wasn’t weird at all. He was extremely nice and had a great sense of humor.

    As a senior, I was taking lessons from a woman who had taught at MacPhail at one time but she was “elderly” (probably in her 70s!!). Even though I have tiny hands and can barely reach an octave, she though I should play pieces by composers such as Rachmaninoff and Liszt (both had huge hands and wrote music with lots of octaves). She wanted me to play a Chopin piece for the Spring recital and I knew I could not do it justice. It would have been embarrassing to play it in public. At the same time, I was practicing the piano part for the school musical (South Pacific). I convinced my dad to call the piano teacher and tell her I was too busy with the musical to participate in the recital. I didn’t go back to finish my final three weeks of lessons – and haven’t had a lesson since.

    I was never required to memorize a recital piece.

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  8. Just saw a cute photo in the Post of a piano teacher and her students, at the end of their recital…

    There is one teacher here in Winona who has her recital at what was my mom’s nursing home – nice grand piano… The residents LOVE it.

    I think both of these would qualify as Charming.

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  9. I have had just two piano recitals.

    For the first one I played An der schönen blauen Donau by Johan Strauss. Despite sweaty palms, I made it through without mistakes, and mom was proud; I was ten years old.

    This was in Nykøbing while I was still at the boarding school. My teacher was the school’s music teacher, our only teacher from the outside and who was not a nun.

    Once a week, after school, I’d strap on my roller skates and make my way to her house across town for my lesson. Back in those days, skates were prone to coming off the shoes in front, sometimes resulting in spectacular crashes. It was not unusual for me to show up at her house with scraped hands and knees, and dirty fingernails were a given. She’d make me go to the bathroom and scrub them before she’d let me touch her grand piano.

    For the second recital, a year later, I was back in Stubbekøbing and had a new piano teacher. He was the organist at the town’s only church, and I remember being struck by how huge his hands were.

    I played Rachmaninoff’s Polka Italienne transcribed for four handed piano; my teacher playing the lower register. We played in the ballroom of one of Stubbekøbing’s two hotels, it was a Sunday afternoon, and many of the town’s inhabitants were in attendance. Perched precariously on the edge of the piano bench in my new dress bought specifically for the occasion, I was so nervous that my teacher had to show me where to put my fingers on the keyboard for the opening notes. Once I got going, though, I was unstoppable, and I raced through the piece in record time. I really don’t remember much about the performance, but I’m pretty sure the audience was grateful that I hadn’t picked a longer piece.

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  10. Our daughter took piano lesson but never from a teacher who held recitals. But our daughter being who she was staged talent shows in our church or spring pageants for Sunday school, volunteer basis only, with her cohort, who between them wrote and directed them with mothers’ help at which she got to play piano and later flute too. They took collection for the food shelf. Did you think my daughter was shy? The shows were funny, sometimes intentionally.

    Clyde

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  11. OT – Blevins page updated:

    Uncommon Reader (Alan Bennett)

    Astrophysics for People in a Hurry (Neil deGrasse Tyson)

    Sunday, July 21

    2 p.m.

    tim’s

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