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Re: Oh, the embarrassment....

Author: EaubeauHorn
Date: 2008-05-03 15:08

I've attended (but not played in) many master classes, and there is one thing that seems to be a pattern. In most cases, the person playing has such a case of nerves that they almost forget to how to hold the instrument, much less play it.
Then, the teacher gives suggestions, and by the end of the lesson the person is playing pretty much as well as they would have if they had not had a case of nerves, and the teacher appears to have worked wonders with the student!

That is not to say that there is not good info presented, because there is. Usually though I think it is a lesson in how to deal with nerves. But one of the outstanding master classes I saw, in terms of the student actually learning something, was one given by Phil Myers of the New York Phil (horn.) The student was having some rhythm problems, and Phil asked him to just play steady 8th notes on a single tone. He demonstrated....and it was metronomic, totally steady. The student couldn't come close to being able to do that, and it was a great lesson for him. However I could see his embarrassment from the middle of the large hall we were in.

It takes a lot of guts to go play for a master class, and congrats to you for taking that on.

EBH

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