Saturday, April 9, 2022 by Anita Byers | Performances

Thirteen of my students played their recital pieces at the Nevada Music Festival today.  I'm so proud of each of them!

I've been sending students to outside musical festivals since my first year of teaching.  Students perform one piece from memory and are given a rating, certificate and comment sheet from an adjudicator.  The comments are always written in a positive and encouraging way even if there are suggestions for improvement.  

I feel that it is valuable for students to participate in an event like this.  It is good for students to have a goal to prepare for and to become used to performing in different settings.  As we prepared for this event, we worked on our performance skills as well as working on our critical listening skills as they performed for each other during our weekly class. 

I always look forward to reading what the adjudicators write on the comment sheets.  It is good for my students to be open for feedback coming from someone other than myself.  Sometimes my students are quite surprised that the judge says some of the same things I have been saying.  ;-)  Most often the comments confirm my thoughts about the piece or the student's playing or sometimes give me ideas that I haven't thought of - which is helpful for me.  :-)

Congratulations to Karaline, Vaylora, Camryn, Sophie, Natalie, Paytin, Caleb, Parker, Cora, Cooper, Naomi, Nathan and Hannah for earning Exemplary ratings!