Festival 2023!
Festival is a lot of fun. In short, Festival is an adjudicated event/performance opportunity for music students to play or sing their music in front of an audience of one. That audience of one is a professional musician-educator with extensive experience in music that will evaluate the student carefully in all areas of their instrument, technique, and musical execution.
For more information about Festival 2023, see here.
But Why is Festival important?
There are several really good reasons for participating in something like festival.
New Ears Hearing You Play or Sing
Having somebody else different than your regular teacher to listen to and provide feedback to you is really helpful and important.
Audition Prep
Another piece is also really important is that many students will one day end up auditioning for various different musical opportunities whether it be a play, and advanced group of some sort, a college music program, military music program, or some other professional organizations. Festival is probably a lot more like an audition than what we do in presentations (what we call our recitals) because it’s directly in front of an individual adjudicator. Learning how to present your music before an audience of one is an important skill as a musician.
Interview Prep
On a whole life level, the audience of one piece is really important and powerful, and goes way beyond music. Think of the potential interviews that you will have one day for whatever, whether a college interview or a job interview. There’s nothing more potentially nerve-racking potentially than doing something like that in front of one person, and Festival is great preparation than that. It doesn’t need to be a scary situation, and part of preparing for festival will be learning how to manage that situation for optimal presentation, so you feel, look, and sound at your best as a musician.
Repertoire
The Repertoire is important and unique as well. Many music students will tend towards one particular genre even though we may get them doing different kinds of music at TIA as we work on our unique themes for each semester, which is also important. But the required music from Festival is generally important repertoire for students to learn for whatever that particular event is that they might not otherwise be exposed to; think of that as practical history and contemporary study—learning what has been and is being written and performed around the country on your instrument.
And of course, Festival is also just a lot of fun and it’s great for the community to come out and see other students doing it, etc. We will also have our Festival on stage event again as well this spring (a special presentation/recital just for Festival participants.