As we enter the last few weeks of the school year, this question always emerges: taper, coast, or accelerate?
There are situations for each one. We can brake on learning new music after the last concert, focusing on other music endeavors to wrap up the year. I brake on new material in the academic classes I teach, reserving time for review, one-on-one lessons, and special projects at the end of the semester.
In other situations, we can coast, trusting in the work that we put in earlier in the year to ensure our final musical moments are quality. The work has been done, so we can take our foot off the accelerator and the vehicle will still get where we want to go.
But somehow I always end up accelerating right to the end with my ensembles.
In Shades of Blue, our final concert was on the penultimate day of classes; now we’re jumping into a significant recording project that will take us several weeks past the end of the semester.
With the Aces, we schedule a final concert near the end of the year. In addition to singing pretty much every song they’ve learned all year, they’ll be learning 2 1/2 new songs in the next 5 weeks, doing some recording as well, and being section leaders for RAMChoir, the “y’all come” tenor-bass choir that I put together each May.
For me, an ensemble is never more capable than it is in the last month of the year. So I’m motivated to take advantage of the work they’ve done since August to accelerate to the finish.
I’ll be exhausted when it’s over. But we will have gone as far as we could in this year.