Piano Recital #1

This past weekend I pulled off my FIRST EVER piano recital! I've always been too intimidated to hold one before because of (a) the number of students I teach, and (b) the size of my apartment. So finally I had the "brilliant" idea of splitting the "Winter Recital" into TWO recitals. (Note to self: if I ever do this again, put them closer together. Now I have to wait another week to repeat Saturday night from scratch. Second note to self: Just don't ever do this again. Have ONE recital on ONE day and don't even try to cater to 19 different schedules!)

Anyway, all things considered, I thought Recital #1 was a great success. The students all knew their pieces well in advance, most of them even by memory, and it turns out having recitals is the only way I can get them to consistently practice! We only ended up having 6 performances, with 7 more slated for this Friday night. Unfortunately there were 6 students who won't be able to perform at all, which I hope to remedy by the next recital. The actual piano-playing part took all of about 15 minutes, interspersed with trivia questions from me about various musical elements of each piece - correct answers were rewarded with 100 GRAND! (Okay, chocolate and not money) And then, we ate.

I didn't take many pictures (I mean, maybe four) and anyway I videotaped the performance part, but here is an "after" picture of the food table. (Meaning after everyone left.)

And one performance (the lighting was so bad from where I was that I gave up pretty fast)

And while I'm at it, here's the program:
Yep that's about it for pictures. I even had one of the rows and rows of chairs filling my living room to accommodate 18 people, but the picture did not turn out. I'll try again at next week's repeat. Just so you know what has been occupying every spare second of my time for the past month or so.

One dad compared it to Thanksgiving dinner - you spend weeks planning and then everything's over in an hour! So true.

Also, I was proud of myself for having the foresight to hitch up the chandelier chain a few links because even I always hit my head when the table is not underneath it. But then every single dad who showed up was over 6 feet tall. And I personally witnessed each one of those dads hit his head on that chandelier anyway.

Welp, time to gear up for RECITAL # 2!!!