We just don’t have the time we had in August.
I pointed out to my students today that they had worked on some pieces from August to February and given increasingly excellent performances along the way. They evolved, grew, and developed their repertoire into something really special.
But the new repertoire doesn’t have that kind of time available. We need to get faster.
(This is an expected part of the development of a group.)
How do we get faster?
- Make corrections with fewer repetitions.
- Apply lessons learned on earlier rep without having to dig in at a granular level.
- Understand the arc of a piece’s development and follow it faster.
- Take advantage of all the ensemble building we’ve done over the last six months.
It’s all there and available…we can take the next steps slowly or at a run. It’s up to the ensemble to choose. But it’s up to the director to make sure they see the forest and the trees.