Spring Piano Recital 2015

Today was our Spring Piano Recital!
We wanted to do something different to last year, so we held it at Greenside and the audience only consisted of the people who were performing. This meant the pressure was slightly lifted as everyone was in the same position, and could sympathize with one another about being nervous.

Catherine and Georgina began the afternoon with a performance of
Everything is Awesome (watch their video here)

  

Students picked a number from a pot to determine the order in which they would perform.
 

We'd never tried this before as we normally have quite a high number of performers, but as we only had 17 students today, we thought we'd give it a go. 

We quite enjoyed letting fate decide the running order, but for the next concert involving piano students (Christmas) we will create a programme before the day. 

After everyone had performed, we sorted them into four groups and set them the task of answering the question:

'Why is learning the piano good for you?' 

 

With their answers, we are going to create a poster for our hallway so all our students can read why learning the piano is beneficial for them. We had a wide range of ages, ranging from 7 to 40+, and they all worked well together to write down their ideas.

The answers were very thoughtful, and included:

'Playing the piano is calm and relaxing, and makes you feel better after a bad day'

'It helps improve your coordination and it exercises your brain'

'It expands your knowledge and appreciation of different musical styles'. 

  

After compiling all the answers, it's clear to see that learning the piano is very beneficial! 

Not only does it provide students with something fun to do instead of being bored at home, but it helps to teach them to be patient when learning new things. 

A few people said how learning a piece, a section at a time, helps them to appreciate that they can't expect to be good at everything straight away - some things need hard work. 

Everyone agreed that they love the sense of pride after they've performed a difficult piece they've been working on for a while.

We think everyone should definitely be proud of themselves, as all of today's performances were brilliant! Well done - it was a lovely afternoon!