Recital weekend is HERE. Oh my god.<\/p>\n
If I think about it too hard my body starts to feel like a live wire.<\/p>\n
For the past month I have been playing for roughly 4-6 hours a day in order to prepare for a 40-minute solo recital. One piece I have been working on for 6 months, another for 2 months, and another for just 10 days!<\/p>\n
I don’t really know how many people are going to show up– I’m not expecting too many. My divorced parents are coming to Michigan from two different states. My 7-year-old private student and her mom are coming. My girlfriend is coming. Maybe my housemates, too? Although, can’t be too sure about that at the moment.<\/p>\n
Not gonna lie, I have really high expectations for myself. The recital is short and the music isn’t very challenging. I specifically chose pieces that I thought would reflect me as a person and musician. I have a very specific idea of what this recital is going to look like in my head, and I’m afraid that the end result will not reach my expectations. I am constantly reminding myself that this is supposed to be\u00a0fun\u00a0<\/em>and not stressful.<\/p>\n Well, it certainly has been stressful. Consistently stressful, actually! Sometimes I am honestly in disbelief that I chose a\u00a0performance\u00a0<\/em>career path, because performing can be a freakin’ nightmare sometimes. Anxious thoughts take over my brain whenever I think about performing, and sometimes they have a debilitating effect on my physical and emotional endurance while I’m playing. It sucks.<\/p>\n But lately I have had some affirming moments in the practice room and in lessons with my teacher because I have been practicing so hard. I can see my hard work pay off on a day-to-day basis and it’s really fun. I find that the more I practice, the more I feel connected to my instrument and confident about myself. I have to hold on to these thoughts as I perform on Sunday night. I have to practice\u00a0hard\u00a0<\/em>for the next three days to make sure I am prepared.<\/p>\n And after this is all over? For all of April I’m gonna dedicate my time to learning Irish fiddle tunes because I’m heading to Ireland in May. I can’t explain how ready I am to relax. March has been an exhausting month. But I can’t think about that yet! Recital first! Wish me luck– I’ll report back next week.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Recital weekend is HERE. Oh my god. If I think about it too hard my body starts to feel like a live wire. For the past month I have been playing for roughly 4-6 hours a day in order to prepare for a 40-minute solo recital. One piece I have been working on for 6 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2197,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10672"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2197"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10672"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10672\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10673,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10672\/revisions\/10673"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10672"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10672"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10672"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}