Although we had all heard in-progress versions of your compositions over the course of the past six weeks, these really only gave us a glimpse of the finished products. In most cases, a tremendous amount of revision occurred subsequent to in-class readings, and in all cases the recital provided our first opportunity to hear everyone's finished compositions. Plus, what we hear in class is almost always a read-through, whereas what we heard in today's recital were polished performances, and this makes a huge difference in how an audience hears the music, as we all know.
These class recitals are always a real treat for me, and I hope you feel the same way. There is something very special about witnessing the process that leads from the amorphous, murky beginnings of a work to it's completed state. The creative process is often difficult, perhaps even painful at times, but it sure is rewarding to see it come to fruition.
And many thanks as well to all of today's performers! If I counted correctly, there were 20 performers involved, so an impressive number of people put a lot of work into making this recital a success.
Thanks to Mary Beth Waldram for recording the show, and to Jessie Blennis for her help backstage!
And finally, thanks to all who remained to hear the end of the concert! Only one class member was unable to do this due to having to go to work, but everyone else hung in there 'till the very end, which is a great way to show your support and respect for each other's music.
→ All went well, but, given that we will be doing this again at the end of the semester, it would be useful to think about what could be improved for our next concert.
- Did you wish there had been a larger audience, and if so, what do might be done to achieve this? Any ideas as to how we could have better publicized the concert?
- Would you have liked to have had a post-concert reception of some kind in the lobby?
- Is there anything we could have done to speed up the concert a bit?
- Any other ideas, or comments?
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5 comments:
It would have been nice to have a larger audiance however do to the fact that there was another concert plus rehersals it was understandable why the audiance was so small.
Post concert reception would be nice or even going to the gov'ner or Duke afterwards would have been nice or the lobby is cool to. It all depends on what time the concert is.
I think the concert went well and everyones pieces sounded great.
Yeah we did have some competition that day for audience. Even so I think if we were to invite people, like Clark said, on a more personal level via e-mail it would be quite effective.
A reception sounds like a great idea. It would be a nice opportunity for people to talk a bit about the concert and how it went after.
Congrats everyone on the great concert and the great pieces.
I think that if we didn't have the competition with other concerts, ours would of had a better turn out. But that's all you can do.
In terms of the concert being very long, which it was, I think that it went as smoothly as it could have. There were not long and awkward pauses between set ups and the introductions were not long at all. The only way I can see our concert not being as long would be to not have the entire work performed, which is not ideal at all. Another possibility would be to have two concerts. It would halve the time, but also halve the audience, which is also not ideal.
All in all, I think that it was a long concert, but a long concert with exciting music! Great job everyone!
I think it would have been nicer to have a larger audience, though we did get a MUCH larger audience for our second recital. The competition on the day of the first concert could have been the reason for this.
I think a reception after the concert would have been a fantastic idea! In the lobby would be nice because we could get our audience involved in our celebration. But I also agree with Mary Beth. It would be cool for the class to head to the Gov'ner for a drink :)
I think whatever we did for the second concert worked quite well, so let's just remember how we went about that one!
A reception or anything of the like after a composition concert would be great I think. Composition is a very personal thing, and in the classroom setting while we're discussing/critiquing it's hard to really open up or go into a lot of detail about your piece, or what you liked about others. After the excitement of hearing all of our pieces performed (or after a beer or two, perhaps), I feel like everyones social barriers would drop a notch and we would all talk in depth about each others pieces and learn things that perhaps we couldn't within an academic atmosphere.
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