Much Success!

So, whatever happened with that student that I talked about in my last post?

Well, even though I thought it wouldn't necessarily be the wisest thing to do, Schmooblebottoms let it be known to him after rehearsal last week that, not only was he, Professor Schmoobles, aware of the Facebook posts that he had written and stupidly made public, but that other faculty members (our department head, his tuba teacher, me, etc.) were aware as well. He also let the student know, in the way that only Schmoobles can, that perhaps he should consider the fact that his failings in school and in music are nobody's fault but his own and it is time for him to start owning up to his lack of work ethic.

That seemed to - FINALLY - put the fear of Jesus in him. The next day, Schmoobles received a very contrite and seemingly sincere apology email (again with the email) from the student. This was Schmooblies response:

"Please understand that your professors here are trying to help you, even when we are hard on you and criticize you. Honestly, those are the times when we are trying to help the most. The music business can be an ugly place out there. It is cut throat, competitive, and unforgiving. If you are not careful it will eat you up, or at least can be unfulfilling, which may be even worse. It can be an incredible line of work though, but you have to be a good musician (something that you have to earn in the practice room and actively seek out yourself) and you have to know your music theory, music history, and if you are an educator, your pedagogy as well. Most importantly, you have to have good study / organizational habits and a strong work ethic along with boatloads of tenacity and resolve.

To that end, I hope that you make it. It will take a lot of hard work and you may need to change some habits, but your teachers are behind you more than you may completely comprehend yet."

And that is that.

Oh, and I saw this follow up Facebook post right after:

So, only time will tell if this really is a turning point for this student. He seems genuine in his desire to change, but of course, talk is cheap. Like I said to Schmoobliez, what these students are often too young and inexperienced to know, is that teachers like us don't need explanations, apologies or promises. And we don't hold grudges over past behavior once change occurs. Truthfully, it doesn't even matter how bad and lazy of a student you had been or for how long. The minute you decide to change your behavior and become a good student and hard worker, that's what you are to us now. A formerly poor student who turned things around and is now awesome.  Anyway, I hope this kid realizes that and makes a change for the better.

What else...what else?

Oh. So we might be moving to Lexington. Yeah. There's that. I'll probably know more within the week.

And I gave a recital last night!

I knew it was going to be a good recital because 1) I came down with a sudden extreme sore throat while lecturing my classes in the morning and became extremely fatigued in the afternoon. In my experience, I perform best under pressure when I am feeling just a little under the weather. Probably something about it balancing out the nervous energy and adrenaline so that I am actually quite calm when it comes time to perform; and 2) I went backstage to the green room to get my instrument ready about an hour before the performance. I opened up my gig bag to find that my reed case had somehow come unlatched and open and ALL my reeds - the ones that I had spent the last 2 months obsessively choosing, working with, playing, preparing and ranking in order of quality for this recital - had become strewn all over the inside of my bag. Two of them were completely ruined and the rest were out of order. I had no idea which were the three that I had decided would be my performance reeds. So that was awesome. A good way to distract myself from any potential tummy butterflies.

Oh well.

Anyway. The recital was with our piano professor and his wife, a fantastic soprano. Our program was a pastoral themed (lots of stuff about lovesick shepherds and animal-strewn grassy hills) chamber music recital in order to celebrate the beginning of Spring. They are such great people, amazing musicians and I had so much fun working with them the last couple of months. The best thing was having my first official faculty recital be performed with two musicians that I have such confidence in, that, out of the 90 minute program, I really only felt about 3 seconds of nervous butterflies. Other than that, it was just a mixture of excitement and fun. I think I've found my secret to a successful performance: vague flu-like symptoms and great collaborators. There were, as always, a couple small technical flubs, maybe a missed cue once, but I thought my sound was good and our musicality was on point. I'm just glad I felt like I represented myself well in front of an audience that included other faculty members, our department head and a crowd of students that had, until that point, only heard me talk at them about music. Now they know I can play as well. Woot.

Here we are!

Now I think I'll take a day off from practicing.