I often find the most impacting lessons I teach (from the perspective of the teacher) are those in which my students actually do the teaching. Just a few short hours until my interview for the graduate program at UL and my students gave me the perfect lesson to help me through tonight's audition.
Both of my students attend the same school and their school orchestra was performing a concert this evening. Last week, their director asked them if they'd like to play something from their private lessons as a solo on the concert. Both students were very enthusiastic, but both were also a bit apprehensive to get up in front of an audience of that size on their own. As they shared their worries and concerns, I did my best to give them the support and advice to get through at their best.
Talking to them, I realized that those same words of support and advice were exactly what I needed to tell myself to get through tonight. I have been feel quite apprehensive, to the point of upsetting myself needlessly, and having to work my way through calming myself down. Tonight I shared with both of them at their lesson: technically, they were on par for their tune, but after the hours of practicing and playing, they had lost the spark that made the tune come alive. Relax and love the tune again, and suddenly the spark reappeared for them both.
It dawned on me that after my hours of practicing the same set of tunes for my audition I'd begun to lose some of the spark that made me love these tunes in the first place. Tonight when I came home, I picked up my fiddle to run through the tunes once before resting. Although I kept some of the technique in the back of my head (back beat, back beat, back beat), my main anchor lied in thinking of my students, and especially my own love of the music. And the spark reappeared.
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