I just wondered if any adult learners had entered a festival and what your thoughts, experiences, feelings were. My piano teacher is keen for me to enter a festival but I have no experience of this and would appreciate any help with this.

I've done a few. Mainly with my sax quartet, but some solos. In fact next weekend I'm playing in the senior recital, french composer and teacher/pupil duet classes at a local festival. Mainly it's to get feedback in preparation for my ATCL.

I haven't done any before, but my singing teacher is keen for me to take part in our local one next year.

I have never done one but Kate Elmitt at the Elmitt Academy in Bedfordshire holds friendly non-competitive festivals, which for me personally is going to be a good way to go in the future.

I have.

I might not have chosen the best class to enter, but Edinburgh's music festival has lots of classes specifically for kids, and a very few with open age access: I actually contacted the organisers to ask advice, because I wanted experience of playing to an audience, with some feed-back, and this seemed a good way to go about getting that. For my level at the time, they suggested I try the Recorder Medal class, or maybe the concerto class - for the latter there'd have been the option of an orchestra if I'd got through to the final, but the problem would've been finding a pianist who could do the orchestral reduction for the first round, and that wasn't something I could muster.

So, I did the recorder medal. I found I was up against three teenagers, all taught by the same lady, and did rather get looks along the line of "this is for talented kids, what are you doing here?" The requirement was for a fifteen minute recital: they did two pieces each, one modern, one baroque......and I did four shorter ones including an avant garde one. At the end the adjudicator picked my performance rather more to bits than the others, before then saying she'd decided to award the medal to the one who was probably the most experienced - me. It left a nasty taste in my mouth, the more so as it wasn't actually true - I'd had half the years of lessons the kids had had.

The final twist came two days later, when I got a phonecall at eleven at night, telling me I'd been awarded a place in the grand finale concert for the festival as a whole....playing the avant garde piece, which I'd only put in because I'd read the biography of the adjudicator and realised she mainly plays that sort of tripe er, material .

I've done alot of classical guitar festivals and thoroughly enjoyed them. Some adults get rather competitive, and think it's a competition rather than a festival.... but I ignored all that and just enjoy it. It is rather nerve wracking for some, but this may be because guitarists have a tendency to spend most of their time playing alone to themselves and aren't used to an audience And adult learners can be terribly harsh critics of themselves. I found the adjudictors mostly very encouraging and positive.
I don't know about other instruments....classical guitarists tend to inhabit a world of their own!
It's nice to support local festivals and meet other people, just get chatting. Why not be in the audience first and see what you think before entering.

Competitive music festivals are well worth doing. I do wish though that there were more non-competitive music festivals around, but that's a different story altogether. Perhaps I should start one...

I have sung a number of years in our local festival adult's class - sadly we don't get enough entrants and last year the separate classes (vocal, WW, Brass, piano etc) got merged. There are now just 4 classes for adults - adult solo, duet, ensemble and choir.
It's a real shame. I won (singing) last year, but that is my last year as I'm not allowed to enter on any of my instruments now (diploma, teaching, playing in the band wipes them all out!).

So I say yes - do it. It is important to let people know that musical learning does not need to stop at age 18!!!
And the adjudicators are generally very nice and encouraging.

No open classes then? That's a pity

Thank you for sharing your thoughts and experiences which have been really helpful. I might just give it a go and see what happens. It would be good to get some constructive feedback.