The Lost Art of Audience Etiquette

Tonight I went to Big Girl's first piano recital. She's seven. She played two songs (from the Level 1A books) pretty well for a kid who has only been taking lessons since January. The performers all sat on the front row in program order. One at a time they went up to the piano, played their songs and then sat back down. They did great.

The adults and siblings sitting further back behaved... how shall I say... not as well as the children up front. That's putting it quite nicely.

In the row directly in front of me was a dad, sister (around 7 or 8 years old), another sister (young teenager) and mom, of the girl who performed last. Through the early part of the program the two daughters sitting between the parents were playing tug-o-war with the printed program. The mother would occasionally stick her oar in, not to break it up, but to participate. It didn't help that she was wearing metal bangle bracelets on her left arm, which sounded like a baby rattle every time she moved.

By the part of the program where the music actually got interesting (a Clementi Sonatina, Bach Invention, and a Schubert piece) I couldn't take it anymore. I gently touched the back of the chairs in front of me, a gesture which the mom saw from the corner of her eye, and indicated that they were distracting me, and would they please stop. I didn't even indicate how rude I thought they were being to the performers on stage. They immediately straightened up just a little.

Not long after that, I heard the mom whispering something to the teenage daughter about a woman being a b#$%h. "Yeah, she's talking about me," I thought.

Within 2 minutes, the younger daughter was putting the folded up program on her dad's shoulder and messing with him. I tapped the back of her chair (which was directly in front of me) with my foot, gave her "the look" and mouthed the word STOP when she turned around.

The pianist they were waiting to hear was last on the program. I'm guessing she was another daughter of theirs. She played the most famous Mozart piano sonata ever, the Sonata in C Major, VERY badly. She couldn't keep her tempo steady to save her life. She rushed through the easy parts and S..L..O..W..E..D..... W..A..Y....D..O..W..N when it got harder.

I'm being hard on the kid that wasn't even a part of the problem. Back to the real offense...

After the recital was over, this lady sought me out and confronted me about making her little girl feel bad. "I hope you're happy making a five-year-old kid cry..." She said a bunch of other stuff trying to make me feel guilty. I don't even believe her that the kid was 5. She looked at least as old as my kid who played in the recital. I gave her my blank smile and said that I understood what she was saying, and I thought it was important to teach audience etiquette. She then said "And shouldn't ADULTS model good behavior?" "Yes," I said, as I continued smiling. She wanted to keep going, and all I said after that was that I understood what she was saying. I didn't give her the satisfaction of an apology, and I suppressed the urge to call her out on her poor parenting and general rudeness.

She totally missed the point. HER behavior contributed to the problem. Maybe if she had stayed on top of her kids and made them feel bad herself instead of being the "cool mom", she wouldn't have been embarrassed by having a stranger call her kids out. And what kind of behavior is she modeling by calling me a you-know-what to her older kid? That says WAY more about her than it does about me.

All-Region Choir

Wow... I'm falling behind around here. So sorry. I said I wouldn't do that. Oh well, I'm doing my best. I also have a blog to keep up with at work, and yes, that one gets priority.

Two weeks ago the 7th and 8th grade choir students of our region auditioned for the All-Region Choir. That day I was on a judging panel as one of five judges listening to the second tenors sing selected measures of the music. We were behind a screen so we couldn't see the auditionees, and we weren't allowed to talk about what we thought of the musical performances until after it was all said and done. We ranked the voices we heard and turned our scores in to the tabulation people who then came out with the final rankings list later that day based on the scores we judges gave. It was very interesting to see the process from the director's side, as this was my first time to be there. I auditioned as a high school kid, and that was the last time I been involved with anything like that. (I'm not going to say how long ago that was...)

The top 15 kids in each section who auditioned that day made it into the All-Region Choir. Those kids got to sing today in an all-day clinic followed by a concert. It's a very valuable experience for the kids who get to do it. The "all stars" from each school sound very nice all together, and they get to mingle with the choir nerds from other schools who are like themselves. It's very, very cool.

Since I work at two schools (the one with the giant choir where I teach only 6th grade, and also the school with the tiny choir where I teach everybody), I found myself bouncing around a little. From my small choir, I had one girl make it. I'm so proud of her. She's a sweet girl, and she works hard. She was a little nervous being the only one there from her school. The other school had 36 kids make it. I invited her to hang out with the other school for lunch and at other points during the day when she might have otherwise been alone.

It was a very nice day. Students made music, directors networked... Lots of fun. You know what was really fun about it? All-Region Choir is where being a choir nerd is cool. We're all in our element, and it really shows...

Afterward I went out to dinner with the 14 kids from my giant choir school who made 5th chair or better in their sections, and the other director. He picked up the tab for us all. He has done this top five dinner as a tradition to motivate and reward the students. It was such a fun time... We went to a fancy place where they use actual linens on the table, and the en trees average about $20 per plate. We don't often get to spend purely fun time with the students. They worked plenty hard all day, and it was time to loosen up and have some fun (and also teach a little bit about table manners). We had reserved the party room at this particular restaurant, and it was perfect. We didn't have to worry about bothering other patrons (after all, we brought a bunch of KIDS with us).

So I left this morning before 7:00 AM, and I got home just after 9:00 PM... It's been a long day, but also very satisfying. I will sleep very well!

Places I've Been

I'm stealing this idea. I liked it, so I'm doing it. And I'm not plagiarizing because I'm admitting that I stole it. And the person I stole the idea from stole it from someone else. That makes it a trend. I'm just jumping aboard.

Anyway, here's where I've been:

visited 26 states (52%)
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