Bringing up Biscuit: Recital time

I've told Jeff before that Biscuit may have gotten his music from me, but he's more Jeff on the inside. Jeff said he didn't exactly understand what that meant. But at Biscuit's recital last weekend, I found a perfect example.

Biscuit was well prepared for the recital. He knew his songs very well. By heart, even. His teacher doesn't care if they use music for recitals. He says it's more about learning to play in front of people, and that once that's not as big a deal, then he can try playing without music. His teacher is all about making sure the kids learn to feel comfortable with performing, one step at a time.

This might sound silly, but I really don't like hearing the shuffling of papers and books during recitals, so I made photocopies of Biscuit's music and put them in page protectors in a nice dark-colored binder. Some may laugh, but Biscuit said it was really easy to get from one song to the next.

Biscuit's teacher has 35 students, but only 18 of them wanted to be in the recital. The lineup was done by experience, and Biscuit was No. 12 out of 18. When his teacher told him his number at his last lesson, Biscuit asked what that meant.

"That means that there are 11 students who are less experienced than you and six who are more experienced than you," his teacher said.

"That's more than halfway to the top," I told Biscuit. "That's pretty good seeing as I didn't get to the top of the list until high school!"

"Whoa!" Biscuit said. I guess that meant he was okay with the lineup.

Last weekend was kind of crazy, and we got to the recital right before Biscuit's teacher welcomed everybody. I felt bad because Biscuit didn't get to warm up.

Every piano is different. The pressure you have to use to push down the keys is different on every keyboard. That's why you always want to do a warm-up before you start playing.

The songs the less-experienced students played were pretty short, so it didn't take long to get to Biscuit.

He walked up there and got situated. Y'all know that I want to take pictures and videos of every move the kid makes, but now that he's older, I always ask him before I take pictures and video. (Well, almost always.)

So Biscuit got settled on the piano bench and started to play. He played a few notes then stopped. And then he went back and started all over again. I don't know if he just had to get the feel of the notes (because of the lack of warming up) or if it just wasn't going the way he wanted or what, but you can see on the video below, it did not faze him in the least.

Here's where the Jeff-inside-him shows.

When I used to play in for recitals or public events (weddings, etc.), and I missed a note, my face would turn bright red, and I would question myself for the rest of the day.

The inner dialog would be something like this. "I can't believe I messed up. I practiced a lot. How could that have happened?"

But Biscuit came down after playing his two songs, and I said, "How do you feel?"

"I am SO proud of myself, Mom," Biscuit said.

There you go.

Check him out.