Spare a thought for me today! It's the recorder classes of our local music festival (Stratford and East London), in which 34 of my pupils are taking part. I've got to do 87 accompaniments during the day, of about 60 different pieces altogether. My fingers will be worn to little stubs by tonight!

The worst aspect for me is that, of course, the classes for the younger entrants - where the accomps are more likely to be easy ones - are earlier in the day, and the ones with the fiendish accomps are mostly later on when I'm already really tired! It would be SO nice to be able to do them the other way round.......

Enjoy the day Jo!

I'm waiting till next month for our local festival where I run the string section - we have 180 entries this year. Potentially, that's a very very large number of small children smiling and asking me to tune their violin for them!

But at least someone else gets to accompany them.

Ouch, 87 accompaniments! Your fingers won't know what has hit them!!! I wish you the best of luck

sounds hard work but fun! have a good day!

Hope it goes well for you and all those taking part. Festivals are (should be) fun but sometimes, like exams, they can be a great weight of responsibility for the accompanist, especially 87 times round!

Good luck

Hope it goes well Jo.

If you can look back at the end of the day and feel that they and you enjoyed it ...!

Maggie

QUOTE (maggiemay @ Feb 12 2005, 01:28 PM)

If you can look back at the end of the day and feel that they and you enjoyed it ...!

Next day - I've just about recovered now! It was a good day and I WAS enjoying it up until about 7.30pm, by which time I was so tired that my brain wasn't reading the notes properly any more, and I kept almost dozing off in the breaks when the adjudicator was talking! (We didn't end till about 9pm)

The pupils had a great time, needless to say, and were really 'buzzing'. The most heartwarming class for me was actually the Novice class - hearing the little ones play in public at the start of their musical careers, and seeing their delight at the applause and at receiving a rather nice-looking certificate........who knows how far some of them may go......?

At the other end of the spectrum, it was a little sad to be accompanying two of my Diploma-level pupils for the last time after many years in this festival, as they'll be off to uni after the summer. I feel very privileged to have helped them develop into such excellent musicians!

It sounds like you did a great job, Jo. I can imagine how tired you must be, 87 accompaniments is a lot to do in one day! Even though I am only a student, it is nice to see the little ones give their first performance and play their heart out because they are not nervous. However, I can remember how my flute teacher was sad at seeing one girl go who was off to university. I don't want to leave my flute teacher, either, luckily I have a few years left with her!

well done Jo, I'm glad it went so well! You should be proud.

yeah glad it went well even though you are now exhausted!!!

Wow, well done to get through that! You must have been exhausted.
I was going to say that your vision and brain would be the first to tire over the fingers as mentioned by someone else here. Just thank your lucky stars that you dont suffer from Meniere's disease like I occasionally do. A couple of hours of looking up, down, left and right, (i.e. sight reading and playing the piano) would probably send my brain, sadly, into a spin these days!!

Gae

Well done Jo - what a marathon! I guess that the number of accompaniments you will be doing at the Adult Learners Concert will be a doddle after that! You'll have time to practice them now.

Congratulations, Jo, it sounds like a wonderful - if exhausting - experience!

Thanks for all your nice comments! After a couple of days' break, we're into the piano section of the Festival now - just had the first day, and two more days to go. Much more relaxed from my point of view - although as one of the convenors I'm busy the whole time with one thing or another.....

The orchestral classes run alongside the piano ones, and tomorrow I'm in the Senior Recital class playing my clarinet! I thought I'd enter myself so as to have a practice in a recital situation, since I'm hoping to do the Dip eventually.
There are only two of us in the class, so I REALLY hope I play well enough so as not to be embarrassingly much worse than the other person, who is young enough to be my daughter!

To my great surprise, I won first prize! I thought I'd played as well as I could, but I still thought the other girl would win!

thats fab jo

CONGRATS!!

Hi Jo,

Only just come across this thread - 87 ACCOMPANIMENTS

My goodness.

Many congratulations on coming first.

Time to put your feet up now, surely!



Amber
x

congratulations on coming first jo. 87 accompaniments? you should get an award for that as well!

Congratulations for coming first in your recital, that is really good

conga rats on both counts jo! go you!

Thanks, everyone!

Phew...........it must have taken a couple of days to unwind!