Today's Excitement

It's amazing how much of America is ignorant of concert etiquette. It's now Octubafest at UK. Basically we've got six concerts over the period of two weeks. Well today's was the graduate and upperclassmen solo recital. So I'm about midway through the program when I play my solo. Doing a pretty good job of it. All of the sudden, right at the bottom of the stage a photographer appears and starts snapping away. While surprising, I tried not to think about it as I'm trying to play through the cadenza of the Hindemith, but I still managed to make quite a few mistakes as this distraction continues, but really I didn't give it too much more thought about what was going on. I finish my solo, bow, and walk off stage.

Now here's where things get interesting. The next performer gets on stage, and before it starts, the photographer snaps another picture. The tuba professor then got quite irate, actually that's way too nice, let's try absolutely ballistic on this guy. He just ripped this photographer a new one and then some, right in front of the entire audience where everyone could here. I couldn't hear it backstage, but I was able to listen to the recording afterwards. It was ugly. The poor photographer was just at a loss. He was just a student getting pictures for the school's newspaper who had absolutely no clue about the arts or concert etiquette. Anyway, he took off rather quickly after that. On a side note, my professor then chewed out the employees for not doing their job quickly enough.

Anyway, that's the story, the rest of this is just my thoughts on the matter. I felt this whole incident was very unprofessional on all sides. First of all is the ignorance of the photographer. The very unprofessional attitude my professor took towards the matter, and the employees for not doing their job properly. I'm trying to think of where to start, and it all leads to the direction I want to go with music though.

People are very uneducated about concert etiquette, especially in this great state of Kentucky. Unfortunately, we are not doing a great job at educating them. Here's a student, trying to get some pictures for the paper, going into an area he's never been before in complete ignorance, and maybe some curiosity, to provide publicity to the arts program here, and what happens? He gets quite an unforgettable experience. Well there goes another person who will have no appreciation for the classical arts. I hope experiences like this aren't as common as I think they are. I guess we'll just keep classical music for those elite few who already know about it. For those anal musicians out there, yes I'm using "classical" very broadly. I know at times I can be a pretty anal musician, but frankly, I'm quite embarrassed by the actions of my professor. If that photographer had any type of rash bitterness in him. I can just see the front headlines with a picture of me blowing away on my tuba with "Musicians are Assholes" right under it. Fortunately his voice sounded more like the deer in the headlights type, and he probably got rid of the film as soon as he could and block it from his memory.

So who's fault is it that this incident happened? Is is the university newspaper's, the administration of the performing center? My professor, who holds everything and everyone to the highest standards possible, and if you don't meet them, you might as well leave?

More and more, I feel it is the fault of school administrators and our music educators. Most of the elementary school programs that I have observed and experienced have one hour, one day a week dedicated to music. A good one is considered to be three times a week for a half hour each. If you take a look at the national standards of what a child should know about music at the end of their fourth year in school, it is not possible with this limited amount of time, but it is absolutely possible if time is given. Most other cultures seem to have this down better than America. Some countries provide two hours a day of just music for their children within the schools. The citizens know and understand music in ways that most of us, even those specializing in music here have a hard time grasping some of the different concepts of music, myself included.

Now do I mean that everyone has to be able to play an instrument and perform at high levels. No. There is so much more to music than that. Within the standards, there are nine categories that are addressed to have a well-rounded person within music. You have performing, composing, arranging, and improvising. These are generally associated to musicians and those of us who are music majors. America does a decent job in these areas. The other areas are those that make a well rounded person within music. I can't remember them all, but they include listening, critiquing, something dealing with history and culture, wow, I can't remember them at all. This shows you how well they're being taught. It just shows that we're so bent on the performance aspect of it that we are losing the world in our search for the perfect performance.

So how do we correct this. I think it starts back at the beginning. It's going to have to be a process between the school administrators and music educators to reevaluate each individual school to find out how best to really educate the society on what music is. The standards have been set, but who's rising to the occasion? Not many, that's for sure. Now obviously this is a very idealistic goal, as much as I wish it were that easy, it's not. But this shows why I'm very much considering a career as an elementary school teacher, because I feel the difference will be made there, not as grown adults.