Chalk It Up and Move On

10 holiday shows, over three weeks, with a 90% success rate. Not bad. Yesterday was the 10th show, and all I can say is: It's a good thing the first nine went so well, or I would be starting Winter Break with a giant dose of depression.

There are a number of factors that contributed to yesterday's failure. For starters, this school has been undergoing some major renovation that has resulted in the loss of the music room. There is so much pressure on the one available room that we have had to knock back to one day per week for instrumental music. With the once-a-week model, failure is almost guaranteed. Class attendance has been sparse for the last month, because of projects, field trips and just plain forgetting. Also, because of a shows at other schools, I wasn't available for any rehearsal in the venue. So, yesterday morning, students showed up out of the woodwork with instruments, but no clue what we were going to do with them.

Before we walked across the parking lot to the mega-church where we hold our big school-wide performances, I tried to talk the kids through the expectations of the show. When we got there, I tuned everyone and put them on stage to show them where they should stand. The piano, which I rely on for support both in teaching and performance was way on one side of the stage. The crew said they would move it out for me, but it would have to stay there for the entire program, and no other class would be using it. Since we haven't had a piano in class anyway this year, I opted to leave it out, except for one song.

Instead of playing piano, I pulled my flute and violin out and played along with the students It was still a disaster. Half of the students in each group stood looking like deer in the headlights, frozen and unable to remember how to do anything. One 4th grader spent the whole time mugging the audience and twisting around to see the kids sitting on the risers behind him. We had to start over when the cellos didn't start with us on one song, and when no one started with me on on another.

Finally it was over- maybe 15 minutes all together- and sweating profusely, I ushered the kids off the stage, back to their seats. Walking out later- off to the middle school to finish the day, and leaving before the show was over- a few parents gave me the thumbs up and said "good job". I thanked them, grimacing to let them know that I appreciate their support, even though we both knew it was awful.  In my email later there was a message from a parent who thanked me for letting all the kids play, and reiterated how excited her son is to play trumpet. If this was 15 or 20 years ago, I would have been blubbering to my husband and feeling like I had chosen the wrong profession. I would have been beating myself up. If I hadn't had nine other, excellent shows before that I would have been mortified at this failure. But as it is I can chalk it up as just one in many shows over many years, and keeping my performance mottoes in my back pocket, move on.