Reduce your rehearsal efficiency – at least, in one specific way.
I believe in using every minute of my students’ time in rehearsal to greatest effect, so that means putting a premium on efficiency. So why would I sacrifice that efficiency, ever?
Because one of my motivations as a teacher is to empower every student to become an interpreter of music. Too many young musicians experience music-making only in a passive role, executing someone else’s interpretation. And that means that, absent a leader, those young musicians have no experience actually making sound musical decisions themselves.
Here’s what I tell my students.
Our rehearsal time is inefficient. But when you leave this ensemble, I want you to be able to make musical decisions yourselves, and that means practicing making decisions. I will set aside rehearsal time to make that practice. Yes, we may not settle on your interpretation, and yes, often times the final result will be my interpretation. That’s just because I’m a more experienced interpreter than you. But without practice, you will never get more experienced. So we decide things together in rehearsal. We debate, we opine, we spend time thinking about what the music wants, the tradition it comes from, the parallels to other works, the composer’s intent, the lyric meaning.
We will try many options on a single phrase, sometimes…only to end up where I knew we would. That’s not time wasted, it’s time spent training interpreters. Someday, they won’t be in my ensemble, and I hope they keep making music for their entire lives.