Whether your students are playing at Carnegie Hall or your living room, it takes much work and preparation to provide a great recital for your students. I have played in and planned several recitals ranging from elementary school to the university level. Meaningful and memorable recitals require input from the teacher, student, and parents. These are just suggestions from what I have learned through my own experiences, I hope these may help you in planning your own recital.
Recital Do's
Make all preparations in advance
Make sure to print all programs and other printed items at least a few days before the recital. This will make sure any technical difficulties or misprints can be corrected in time. If you are having students bring refreshments, make sure they know well in advance what you want them to bring. Prepare your students in lessons before the recital how to come to the piano and what to do after they play. Let your students have time to get the feel of the instrument when possible, if the instrument is not their regular lesson instrument.
Keep the recital concise
Don't make recitals too long. Younger students probably won't be able to sit through to many performances without becoming a disturbance. When young children start getting fussy, parents will want to take them out or leave all together. If you have a large number of students, try to keep their performances to one song each or have 2 separate recitals.
Teacher Performances at recitals
I have heard several people say teachers should perform and others insist that teachers shouldn't perform. I have done both. In my experience both the students and their families have told me they sincerely enjoy the recitals where I have performed after my students. So I would recommend performing after your students to give them a look into what they may be able to look forward to in the future. It can also be good "advertising" for new students from the people in the audience, such as aunts and uncles or friends of current students.
Recital Don'ts
Leave the program printing to Day of
One of my first recitals I ever put on for my students was a big learning experience. One of the biggest problems I had was the programs. I waited until the day of to do the printing, big mistake! Our printer ended up having some technical problems that day and it took several hours for them to get done. This caused me to be running late on the way to the recital.
Ask Parents to do too much
Because of my lateness to the recital, I ended up asking one of my parents to greet the others as they came in and let everyone know what was going on. This parent did not appreciate being asked to do everything until I got there and was very upset with how disorganized things were. She ended up dropping lessons with me and changing to a different teacher. This was a difficult lesson to learn but one I will never forget!
To few students / to many students
My very first recital I only had 3 students. I was teaching at a Home school Co-op where another piano teacher was also teaching. She had planned a recital and given me permission to add my students. I wasn't very clear with my student's parents on what to do once they performed. I had my students perform first, but after they performed all my students left, so they missed out on hearing the other students and experiencing a real recital.
While I have never put on a recital with too many students, I have performed in recitals that had too many students. One of the problems with too many students is that families tend to leave after their kids play. As one of the more advanced students in these particular recitals, I was scheduled at the end of the recital. The beginning students played at the start of the recital. So my fellow advanced students and our families sat through all the beginning students play their pieces, and one by one families started leaving. By the time it got to our performance times, it was really just our families left to hear us. While is understandable why families left, this seemed very unfair to us. Also, the younger students missed out on hearing more advanced pieces and getting to see what they could look forward to playing in the future.
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