<p>My son (piano, high school junior) was offered a full recital (1 hour or so) by a local piano association. He had a shared piano recital (25 minutes) with them a few years ago. This one would be more formal and he would be the only one playing. This association commonly brings in professional pianists for formal recitals. Is this important for his resume to a college/conservatory for a performance degree? I know that the college audition is everything, but what is the downside of doing a recital? Time. His junior year is filled with academic requirements (SAT, SAT II, AP) and many other music requirements. He is currently focused on only 30 minutes of music for the MTNA division competition. Someone told me that a recital like this is really important, but I never got a chance to find out why or whether it would be worth the time and effort. It seems like you have to divert effort away from new major pieces to bring older pieces up to performance level. Are high school age recitals like this common? Do you invite people from colleges and industry (not that they would come)? Are there other things that might be a better use of his time? He could be working on a concerto for a competition. He had to pass up several of them because he had nothing ready to go. I think the recital would be good for him to do and he wants to do it. It just seems impossible to figure out the timing. Maybe next fall and use the summer to get the pieces ready. However, summers have usually been reserved for major new MTNA pieces that one has to commit to by the beginning of September. Any comments/feedback?</p>
<p>Where we live, a number of the better youth musicians participate in recitals. Most of them participate in one as a member of a group, and they don’t have to have so many pieces ready. My daughter has been planning to put on a full one-hour recital herself, but as you said timing is an issue. </p>
<p>I do think that concerto competitions and such are also important. Orchestral musicians spend much of their time with orchestral work. My daughter, a wind player, finds herself in such competitions competing mostly with pianists and strings.</p>
<p>I think, for a full hour recital, it would be better to plan the timing of it yourselves.</p>
<p>Maybe another pianist will have some more thoughts.</p>
<p>Hi! My S did a full length recital at the end of his senior year. (He is a cellist.) It was done at the encouragement of his teacher at the time and became a way for him to do a final performance for friends and family before heading off to College. He ended up sharing it with a friend of his who is also now a music major in Voice. We had it in June and it worked out great because it gave him something to work on after he finished his auditions, he performed all new pieces that he started after his auditions were over. We had a small reception afterwards and it became his graduation party as he did not want a traditional party. I really don’t think having a recital on the resume helps with music admissions, as many have stated in other posts it really hinges on the audition. If your son decides to have a recital I would definitely encourage you to schedule it when it makes sense for you and your son as stated by Woodwinds.</p>
<p>From what I know of Piano, something like that probably would not help with admissions into a performance program, that is based entirely on the audition. Inviting people from colleges or industry wouldn’t do much, unless someone from a company was so impressed they offered a scholarship to your son, but I wouldn’t count on that. </p>
<p>The nice part about a recital is it is a performance opportunity, a chance to be in front of an audience, to see what it is like to really be a performer rather then simply practicing all the time:). On top of that, the experience in front of an audience can benefit when his time comes for auditions, every time you perform as a musician you get more and more comfortable being in front of people. Likewise, competitions can serve the same purpose, while it can be debated whether competitions really do anything per se, given the number of them, they do give a chance to perform in front of a panel and be judged, something an audition is all about. Some competitions also are valuable in that they lead to other performing opportunities or maybe have scholarships as part of the package. I think the experience is valuable, even if I question whether the competitions often measure anything relevent. </p>
<p>You need to balance that out against the cost of doing so, if he has to learn new repertoire to be able to do it, will the time that takes be time away from academics? Would it be away from working on things more related to his repertoire (obviously learning a concerto is not a bad thing…)… It isn’t easy making that trade off, obviously, or deciding the relative merits . I think performance opportunities are worthy of taking the time, and that I would weight that heavily, but your situation is unique.</p>
<p>D3’s experience was similar to that of cellomom’s son - she did a post-audition recital at the end of her senior year. While she played some material that she had used at auditions, it was also a chance for her to bring some new rep up to speed. Most of her friends used a similar strategy.</p>
<p>There were a couple of people who did hold senior recitals in the middle of the academic year, just as they were about to go out on the audition circuit. That way, the reasoning went, they were able to present polished works and have a chance to perform for a supportive audience just prior to auditions.</p>
<p>So many good responses! I think your son should try to do the recital if at all possible. It sounds like this association thinks very highly of him, and you never know what kind of help they could be to him in a year. My D took part in numerous recitals while in HS- those involved 1- 5 other people on the program-and then put together a longer, private recital which took place a few days after graduation. That gave her the chance to sing things that were outside of the scope of what was called for in auditions and she had a blast! Please let us know how things go for your son.</p>
<p>I don’t think a recital will be of much use as a hook for admissions. And I have a hard time imaging an scenario in which college faculty would attend (unless he is already studying with them at the precollege level.) Our experience is that it was hard for my daughter’s precollege teachers to attend her recitals (though they tried) because of scheduling issues.</p>
<p>My daughter did two recitals her senior year of high school: one was in February, after one audition but before most of them. It was through her precollege and she got the slot by lottery. She was given 45 minutes total in the hall, so I’d say it was more of a 3/4 recital. Kind of high stress, but good for the audition prep because it was another opportunity to get her audition rep out in front of an audience. </p>
<p>In May she did a truly full-length recital in our own city (her precollege was in NYC but we live in a different state.) She used different repertoire since she was sick of the audition pieces, and, because this was kind of doubling as a graduation event, she included more showpieces and audience-friendly repertoire. It was a lot of fun-- relatives, her own students, and friends came from far and wide. We had a reception with lots of food. This one was held at her local music school, so a lot of former teachers and coaches attended. It was a blast.</p>
<p>Over the years she has often used self-hosted recitals to get rep in front of audiences, and also to double up as fundraising activities for her outreach projects. As a side note, organizing and producing an event is a great project for a young musician, since their entrepreneurial and marketing skills may turn out to be as valuable for survival as their musical prowess.</p>
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<p>As usual, glassharmonica has got there well ahead of me. 
D3 is now facing the challenge of being the primary organizer for a fundraising recital that will bring together musicians from several locations, and it’s been a real education for her. Turns out the music is the easy part!</p>
<p>Thanks for the feedback. I wanted to see if we were really missing something one way or the other. He still has the main focus of selecting his college audition repertoire and getting the pieces to a higher level than he has in the past. He is at the point where the gains require much more effort. This is tough when it’s more fun to move on to new music. A recital can provide a good incentive for that, but he also does two competitions and the state’s solo & ensemble festival each year. He has also had two formal master classes since the summer. Then there is the chamber music and recitals and school musicals. He loves performing.</p>
<p>Students at his school are required to do a large senior project and he was thinking of trying to raise money to replace the school’s grand piano that’s falling apart. We will have to see if a recital can tie in with that. However, the senior projects have been known to be black holes for your time. I try not to let him get overbooked.</p>
<p>He should talk to the group offering him the recital opportunity,if they are willing maybe he could use that place to solicit donations to help replace the piano. Or he could put together a benefit concert of school musicians, or put together a party held at the school featuring music to help raise funds (just some thoughts)…Or maybe he could recruit kids to go on a letter writing campaign finding foundations or maybe even a music store, to try and get it replaced either through cash grants or perhaps even soliciting a donation of a piano (though that can be a tough one, and the school might not be thrilled…the original idea might be better, to springboard a fund raising campaign, featuring music performances, a donation jar at school events and so forth:).</p>
<p>I agree about his time scheduling. I am no expert on the piano per se but have been around a lot of piano students and now is a good time to make the push to polish repertoire. Among other things, it may be a good thing to get an evaluation from someone who teaches at a reasonable decent music program at the college level, especially if you feel his current teacher may not necessarily be aware of current standards and such, or just to have outside feedback, to know what to work on, and also make sure the rep level is high enough for the schools he may want to go to. A piece of advice I think is valuable is to try and have the rep you will use solidly in place by spring of Junior year, and then spend the next 10 months before auditions fine tuning it (so by spring the rep should be picked and the student should be pretty solid on it, so then he can spend the time really picking up the fine details). </p>
<p>It is going to have to be a focus, because piano is incredibly competitive in admissions for almost any decent program, and having the time to perfect things is a really, really good thing, any of the solo instruments like piano,violin, flute and cello are insanely competitive (as opposed to other instruments, which are sociopathicaly competitive:).</p>