The Final Concert

This morning was the End of Year Concert at the Music School I teach. The concert was set to start at 10am and we arrived just before, with a lot of my students standing outside shouting out to me

"HURRY UUUUUUUP!!"


I told them to go into the hall to watch the violin classes perform before going into the adjacent classroom to prepare for their performance.

I rushed into that classroom with my brothers to get our violins ready for our violin performance as Aonghas set up the video camera at the back of the hall. That's when he realised the video camera was missing any card! We had no idea what to do as after our violin performance the flute classes were going to perform, and then my recorder students! There wouldn't be enough time for Aonghas to drive home and back to grab a card, so the best thing for him to do was to buy a card.

Our violin class was the last of the violin classes to perform, and we performed a Pleyel duet. It wasn't too bad, although we almost collapsed at the end! Straight after our performance, Aonghas rushed off to buy a card while I got all my students to gather in the adjacent classroom to prepare. I ran through the procedure and what was going to happen, and was going to have a run-through each class's performance. I ended up having to make each class perform only two of their three pieces. I only got through one class's pieces when the flute teacher came in to tell me my students were up next!

I brought them into the hall before realising I forgot to bring with me the larger recorders, so I quickly went back to get them. I got back to the hall, and Aonghas still wasn't back so I had to start the performances without him.

The performances went pretty well. It was then time for one of my classes to perform a piece that required Aonghas to play one of the parts. Fortunately Aonghas just arrived in time! I could see him setting the camera up  at the back of the hall, so I introduced him and the different sized recorders to the audience just to give him some time to get up on stage! When he got on stage, I gave him a large recorder and he asked me if I wanted him to play a smaller recorder but I just told him to play with the big recorder. I was playing the treble recorder, and it was only half-way through the piece I realised we were playing the wrong recorders! I just had to improvise!

Finally we had out 'grand finale', when I got all my students up on stage together and got them to either play or sing We Wish You a Merry Christmas. I forgot that I had gotten two of my students to introduce the item, and so I introduced it myself. Just as I finished, the two students started introducing the item themselves! They did pretty well though! The performance was equally impressive! I was really proud of them!


(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZ1kh2BQELA)

I led them back to the classroom after the performance to take a group photo with all of them as well as to hand out reports to them (which I had written the night before during our youth group Christmas play rehearsal!), and some small gifts for each of them (I spent all of yesterday wandering around West City trying to decide what to give them - I ended up giving each of them some lollies, a pencil and a magnetic bookmark!). I got quite a few Christmas presents from my students as well which was really nice of them. One of my students wrote a nice message in the Christmas card he gave to me:

After students from all classes had performed, it was time for prize-giving. Each of us teachers got a present from the school, before certificates and trophies were handed out to students. The turnout for recorder was very poor! None of my students stayed for prize-giving except for three of them, and so we gave them extra special claps just for being there!

It was really cool seeing some of my old students from past years getting awards for other instruments.

Some of my students won't be coming back as they'll be moving on to other instruments like the flute which will be a bit sad, especially one of my students, Brian, who I've taught for the past three years. Hopefully I'll see them getting awards for the other instruments like some of my other old students though!

I can't believe I've already been teaching music for my sixth year! There have been ups and downs but I've enjoyed teaching this year, and I'm really glad I'll be able to continue next year! Till then, time to sleep in on Saturdays!