As of 9:40pm, March 1, 2006, with the conclusion of my recital, the second of three requirements for my Masters was finished. The first part was the class work and the third the writing of a thesis…. However, my point is what I have learned from this recital is that you cannot take it too easy prior to performing the show.

About a year ago, early 2005, I put together the pieces for my recital. Three months later, I found an accompanist. We worked for about eight months to fine-tune the material. Roughly a month prior to the recital, we were able to play through the entire repertoire twice in one day, with a run-through in the late morning and again in the early evening. This was a good feeling for both of us, at this point the endurance was there and so was the music. What hit me hard was the fact that I decided to take it easy about a week and half prior to the recital date.

Do not do this!

I lost some of my regular endurance, my comfortable range dropped about a minor third, and the last few rehearsals were feeling more like labor instead of music. Ok, it is a recital, and you have your teacher, colleagues (especially the trumpet studio all sitting together in a row, purposely in your line of sight), professors, family, friends, and if you are lucky, random people attending the concert. No pressure, right? Well, it is pressure, and my decision to take it easy made me lose some of the confidence that I built in the last year in learning the pieces.

My point, keep to your regular life, do the normal every day playing. If you do an hour warm up, keep doing it and if you do breathing exercises, keep doing it. I decided to reduce some of my fundamentals in fear that I would use too much of my strength and energy and have no gas for the show. Wrong. Regular practicing is the gas station where you fill up to have gas to do a show. The reduction of daily playing made a stressful situation, the recital, even harder. I finished it successfully, with some better then expected moments. The next day was when the recital really hit me. I woke with my body aching all over, especially in my lungs and diaphragm area. This is most likely from an intense focus on my breathing when the playing was not working as smoothly as I would have liked. Four days later, I have finally calmed down and healed from the recital and am back to normal life. I am still kicking myself for taking it too easy, hence this article.

When doing a recital, keep to your regular life schedule and treat it as another gig, although a very challenging one. I have done so many unusual jobs that my practicing schedule is designed to prepare me for the unexpected. However, the recital was expected and it felt like I was not ready for the unexpected. I hope my thoughts help, and remember to have fun when playing. I actually did that a few times in the recital and I think it saved me.

Kevin Miller

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