Hello fellow performers,
Concert is taking place in less than 24 hours' time. At this juncture, I feel that, given that some of us are not experienced performers, it is important to highlight a few things here:
1. Expect imperfections.Good old Murphy always makes his appearance when least desired. This is not making any excuses for our performance later [every one of us did practise hard, right?], but it is a matter of life. There are many concerts which I have been a part of. There are some which I felt the bands I took part in performed better than average, but there are also others where the bands fell apart midway through a piece.
Never mind about us, most of us who are non-professionals. Even professional musicians like
Beethoven have had their forgettable concerts.
Whatever individual mistakes we may make later on stage at 7:30pm, I'm sure most of us are honest enough to raise our hands and acknowledge that.
Like life, there are no second opportunities to re-play a note that you have missed. Don't beat yourself over that little note.
2. Enjoy yourselves.Making music is supposed to be a fun activity, but playing notes is not. It's very easy to make notes, but it's very hard to make music. And to make music, you must put yourself in the right mood to do so. Some of the pieces which we are playing demand us to be aggressive, others require us to be gentler, and yet others demand us to put ourselves in the shoes of other cultures.
And it is very very hard to put yourselves in the right mood unless your mood is relaxed. I guess I don't need to remind you to take your making music seriously, right? :-)
3. Expect criticism.This concert is a performance which anyone from the general public can view and listen, and people will be comparing us with other bands which they have heard. In this day and age where IT is such a common means of interaction between people, some members of the audience will no doubt be putting their thoughts of our concert on their blogs.
When people are behind their keyboards, giving their honest opinions about our concert, some of them will be negative, unfair, malicious and/or scathing. Others will criticize certain aspects of the performance - or even certain players or sections.
I appeal to all of you to remember that you are representing Moulmein Wind Symphony on stage in this concert. As a result, no matter whether you are a guest player, member or even exco member, any defensive retorts from you in cyberspace will be fully judged by everyone who gets to read it - and remember -
the customer is always right.
As such, it is important to conduct yourselves in a professional manner no matter how unwarranted you feel the post-concert criticism we may get are.
Please do not flame any of our critics, especially in cyberspace! Chances are that you will not be able to convert them and it could eventually lead to a flame war between the honest critic and yourself - and I'm sure all of you know how flame wars end.
Instead, prove to them that we can put up a better show next time round if you think that they are being harsh, nasty or unfair, and their blog entries on our performances will collapse onto themselves.
[To all members of the public, please note that the exco of this band explicitly, unambiguously and categorically does not approve of members disrespecting their audience in cyberspace, no matter what you say about us. You paid good money out of your own pocket to watch us, and because of that, you are fully entitled to rip the tickets in our faces, rant about how badly we sound to your friends or over the blogosphere if you don't like what you hear, and, if you are even nasty enough, hail rotten eggs right into my direction (and not anybody else's) because I am responsible for a large part of the concert - i am the concert master.]Although we can never please everybody, we have tried our best to put up a good show, and that should be the only thing on our minds after the concert today.
[To all members of the public (2), if we did well, please congratulate us; and if we didn't, please be honest about that too, ok? We welcome all honest feedback.]After which, please remember that there is a band chalet to go to from the 27th to the 29th of June 2007 inclusive, so please do try to come along, enjoy the food and drinks, and share your thoughts on playing in Moulmein, yes?
Ok, enough from me at 5am. Here's to a good concert later!
SS
