To demonstrate my leadership and coaching abilities, I decided to create a woodwind trio that I conduct and coach. The members of the trio are all from my school – Bearsden Academy. We rehearse on Tuesday lunchtimes in the music department from 12:55 till 1:25.
Back in September we met for the first time to discuss what type of piece they wanted to play and when our performance would be. The members of the group are about grade 7 standard and wanted a piece that was challenging but wasn’t ‘too whacky,’ to quote the clarinettist! We decided that an appropriate time to perform would be at our school’s chamber concert.
I listened on YouTube to various recordings of different pieces. However, the piece that I thought the group would enjoy the most was the Three Pastels by Alexander Von Kreisler. It is roughly five minutes long and is in three movements.
I then handed out the music at our first proper rehearsal and I recorded them sight reading part of the first movement. I will post videos of the sight reading and their progress at the end of the rehearsal in the next post. Due to the fact that the music was challenging, the sight reading was very difficult. However, during the rehearsal, we worked on how the parts work together, as well as figuring out the rhythms of the individual parts.
I asked that all the members of the trio listened to the piece on YouTube; they had a look at the other movements and tried to figure out the rest of the rhythms and technical passages in the first movement.
Overall, I think the first rehearsal went really well and the piece was well received by the group. The group are very enthusiastic and are really fun to work with however I feel that in future the group might struggle with focus but that will be revealed in the course of time.
