What do you do when your rehearsal plan isn’t working? No matter how prepared you are, the state of your singers that day can occasionally mean that your plan won’t work.
The Post-Thanksgiving Monday rehearsal is always awful and I never remember.
Five days of relaxing – and often travel – means whiplash for the students. By 7pm on their first day back, they are dead.
If I could just remember that, I would plan differently, but this year I had to react on the fly. Which is an important skill.
I’ve tried both ways: sticking to your plan and throwing it out the window. I think both have their place, and I think it’s a gut decision. You have to really look at your singers and make a call about whether your continued insistence will pay results.
Last week, I had to do both. I dragged them through the exhaustion because we had a gig to be ready for before our next rehearsal. But I also tossed out my last 30 minutes of planned rehearsal and let everyone share Thanksgiving stories.
There are times to hold your students feet to the fire and times to let them relax by the fire. And if you can’t predict which it’s going to be, then you need to be willing to change your plan on short notice.
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