Costume Recital

Today's Costume Recital was GREAT!! Absolutely fantastic!!

Of course, there were the inevitable slip-ups due to nerves, but all in all, I was honestly impressed with every single performance.

We had quite a varied program this year! The students' ages ranged from 5-15, with their playing experience between 2 months to 6 years. Nine out of the ten students were girls.

For four of the students, this was their very first recital. (For Amanda, it was technically her second recital, since she played one piece at last year's... but this was her first time as an "official" student on my schedule.)

The costumes were very creative. We had Belle from "Beauty and the Beast", a few phantoms, a Native American, a genie, a blue M&M, and so on.

My 2010 Studio: Nine girls and one very brave boy.

Amanda was a fairy tale princess... or a good witch. We couldn't quite decide.

Eva wanted to dress up too, even though she wasn't in the recital.
Here she is posing as Mulan for a quick picture before she headed to the playground with the babysitter.

Amanda was the third student to perform and she played two duets and one solo. She was the very definition of calm, cool and collected!

First up was "The Silly Song" from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.

Next we played a duet of "Gallop, Pony", an example of music in A minor.

And her grand finale was a very difficult piece, again in A minor, called "Pterodactyls." She had a few tiny glitches but only because she was nervous.

I was so proud of her!

After all of the student performances, I played three pieces while the kids enjoyed some well-deserved refreshments. (One of the student's moms made pumpkin caramel whoopie pies.... ohhhh boy, were those good!)

My bee costume

I played a Classical piece called "Bees in the Clover", followed by a jazz piece called "A Taste of Honey", which you may recognize as a Beatles or Barbra Streisand hit. I finished the recital off with a contemporary piece called "Ghost Stories. It was filled with dissonance, contrasting dynamics and descending chromatic chords.

Now that it's all over, I can breathe a huge sigh of relief... and begin preparing for the upcoming holiday season. We start learning Christmas carols already next week!