Christmas Piano Recital

Willa's teacher has been giving her Christmas music ever since Halloween ended (though, for a week or two around Thanksgiving, we worked on the Primary song "For Health and Strength). Finally, it was time to choose a song for the Christmas recital. Her teacher pulled out a few options and it was love at first sound for Angels We Have Heard on High. She loved it and practiced it NON-STOP for the first day or two after her lesson until she had mastered the notes. It was really cute, when she first played it for Ryan she stopped right before the chorus and said, "And now, daddy, here comes the tricky section."

She also became quite frustrated at any mistake and was having full-fledged meltdowns during practice when she would get a wrong note. I tolerated these meltdowns with a mixture of humor, exasperation, compassion, and probably anger.

The day of the recital came and we actually had a lesson that morning. While I was helping her get shoes on for her lesson she told me she was a little scared (thinking we were going to the recital). Ah, performance anxiety. I can't believe we are there already. We talked to her teacher about being scared and her teacher gave some good advice to her. There is a duet option to the piece, so even though she had planned to play a solo, she thought maybe she would like her mom (me) to play a duet with her so she wouldn't be as nervous.

We practiced the duet, but when we got to the recital she decided to go solo. There was supposed to be a piano team before her as the first song, but one of them got stuck in traffic, so Willa had to go first. I think that threw her a little because she wasn't expecting it, but suddenly had to get up. You can see her fear and her concentration as she walked the long walk. I'm really proud of her for pulling through it. I especially love the extra long bow at the end. Her teacher tells her to say "hippopotamus" when she bows and I think the nerves maybe added to it. It was darling. The video isn't great, but when I tried to zoom closer it got all fuzzy.

She's doing so well in piano and I realized that she's learning some of the same songs that my 12 and 13 year old piano students are struggling with! She has her own five-year-old struggles, but I'm so glad we started with such a good teacher who is giving her a strong foundation of note reading and music reading. The teacher told us we could leave the recital early since it was in the evening and rather long. Willa didn't want to go, she was sitting with the next youngest girl, and totally enjoying her night. June, on the other hand, was becoming quite the pest so we hauled out of there.

This little girl, Valerie, gave her own solo recital a few days later. Ryan took the girls (I had a harp job). Willa is working on the same books and is just polishing the songs up and memorizing them, so it was good motivation to see Valerie's recital. Her teacher thinks we could have Willa's in January, but I think because of our cruise, we'll probably push it to February. Exciting things happening in the piano world, though! I kind of wonder if she'll really even take to the harp when we eventually start. It's fine if she doesn't, but I was just thinking about this holiday season when a lot of unexpected gigs popped up with lots of unexpected money. The harp is good for things like that, the piano isn't quite the specialty instrument.

Waiting for the start.

Her teacher got these chocolate pianos for the students. Willa was enchanted and wanted to place it so it looked like Mickey was playing. She then started eating it.

Girl with her piano