Sunday's Music Recital

This past Sunday, my guitar students had their annual recital. The music school at which I teach rents out Merkin Recital Hall at Lincoln Center, in NYC, and the kids get to perform a song to show their parents their work. Like most recitals there are the requisite performances of Fur Elise, Moonlight Sonata, Minuet in G (by Bach), and so on. Typical recital fare for parents to clap wildly for their 5-10 year old.

Now I don’t mean to sound cynical there. I am really proud of all the students who performed. It is something for a four year old to get up there and perform. That said, as a musician, there is only so many times I can hear these songs over and over again. Plus, I wasn’t able to really enjoy the recital as I had to play babysitter to the young kids and transport them from the balcony to backstage when it was their time to perform.

I want to share a story about one of my students, Maya. I have written about Maya before, in the post “Sometimes I Love Kids, Sometimes I Hate Kids.” Maya has ADHD and while being a creative student, she more often than not has trouble focusing. Half of our lesson would often be wasted in trying to get her to focus on playing. I was worried when she said that she wanted to participate in the recital because I wasn’t sure that she would practice hard enough to get a song down.

Amazingly, my doubts were proven unfounded as Maya did practice a lot. After two weeks of figuring out what song would work for her, she decided that she wanted to play and sing “She’ll Be Coming Around the Mountain.” For the four weeks before the recital, Maya was incredible focused in our lessons. She was always anxious for me to be able to tell that she had practiced. She went from not being able to play the chords in time, not being able to keep a beat, and not getting two of the three chords needed to sounding good to being able to do all three.

This is not to say that her performance wasn’t without flaws or mistakes. However, if I was to grade her I would have given her an A, because the effort and improvement that she put forth was worthy of such a grade. Before she went on stage, she was very nervous. I tried to allay her fears by telling her that however she performed, she had made an A in my book.

Maya took the stage and performed “She’ll Be Coming Around the Mountain” with no fear. She tore right into and sang her heart out. Her parents were extremely happy, as was I.

Now here is the funny part of this tale. The week before the recital we are reviewing the song. The last verse is supposed to go, “We’ll be singing Hallelujah when she comes!” That’s not what Maya sang. She sang, “She’ll be singing Hallelujah when she comes!”

In my head, I couldn’t help but laugh loudly and think, “I bet she’ll be singing Hallelujah when she comes! And it’s been my experience that she often does!” Of course, I couldn’t say that out loud. Also, I had visions of the parents in the audience cracking up if Maya sang this at the recital.

So I said, “Maya, it’s very important that you sing “We’ll be singing. . .” for that last verse.”

“Oh, ok,” She replied, ”I was a little nervous there and made a mistake. I’ll remember that for the recital.”

Thankfully, she did.