Milestones

After performing in a student recital this morning I started counting up performances that I've been in since coming to Western and realized that including final performances I've done more performing here than I did in my four years of formal lessons during high school. I can't say that I'm any less nervous about performance now than I was before but it gets easier to work with the nervousness. It helps that we have a beautiful piano here that if not quite identical to the one at left is very similar. The tone is amazing, and the keys work with you instead of against you making it an absolute joy to play. There's something to be said for sitting to perform at a beautiful instrument and realizing that it takes you as a musician playing that piano to make that instrument more than just a beautiful ornament. The more I learn about music and musicianship the more in awe I am of the creators of these instruments. The piano is like a seed that's waiting for water so that it can come to life. The strings are all ordered and each key is attached to its hammer, the acoustic properties are built into the form but it takes a pianist to create the flower from the seed. You can't just have a pianist or just a piano, it takes both working together, to create the entity that we call music.