Category Archives: Current Students Performances

A fantastic glitch in performance

Two students of Hunter Mill Music Studio on stage!

Selvina Kong, piano

Fedor Ouspensky, conductor

South Lakes High School Orchestra

Please, note at 3:20 a “terrible” glitch! the pianist had a complete black-out memory slip, so devastating that she seemingly lost her place altogether. This is a very common situation for inexperienced (and very experienced!) performers. But keep watching, and pay attention to how much more relaxed and confident she gets after she finally makes a recovery from the event! and how poised and proud she is afterwards receiving the greeting from the audience. And how supportive and enthusiastic are the applause! 

Sure, when you go to a concert presented by professional artists, rarely something of this magnitude happens, but when it does… the audience actually LOVES it even better! Why? Because it makes the artists people, more human, not so much like remote idols covered in the glitter of glory.  Especially if the artist is actually a truly artistic and expressive musician:)

Below watch the recording from the same concert, this time edited. How do you think we get all those absolutely note-perfect recordings on labels? Hmmmmm….

Michelle’s Unnerving Practice and result

Michelle’s Unnerving  practice on the morning of her winning concerto competition performance

(Story by her dedicated and nervous mom, Sharon Yip) …..

Michelle had been practicing very hard on playing the Shostakovich Piano Concerto, did a pretty good job in recording (see the video posted), and was excited to go to the concerto competition. The day before the competition, she was feeling very sick, coughing and having fever. The doctor diagnosed her with bronchitis, and put her on antibiotics. “Oh no”, she said, “why do I get sick at the worst time?” We were all disappointed and didn’t know what to do. The next morning, she was feeling better after taking the medicines. After consulting Anna, we decided to let her try playing at the competition.
Michelle had been practicing very hard on playing the Shostakovich Piano Concerto, did a pretty good job in recording (see her video posted), and was excited to go to the concerto competition. The day before the competition, she was feeling very sick, coughing and having fever. The doctor diagnosed her with bronchitis, and put her on antibiotics. “Oh no”, she said, “why do I get sick at the worst time?” We were all disappointed and didn’t know what to do. The next morning, she was feeling better after taking the medicines. After consulting Anna, we decided to let her try playing at the competition. So……

She did a rehearsal at home.

As you can see from the video, she made bunch of mistakes, sounded messy in many places. She was embarrassed and frustrated (take a look at her facial expression when making big mistakes, and at the end …) She said:

“this is terrible! I’m not going to win anything!”

I reminded her about what her teacher always told her –

try your best, enjoy the playing, and don’t worry about the result.

She finally decided to go. The result? She followed her teacher’s advice, tried her best, and won the first place 🙂