I Passed!

On Tuesday, February 8th, I had my pre-recital hearing for my Senior Recital.  Let me explain what that means.  In the BYU violin program, three weeks before you perform a recital it is required that you play portions of all your recital pieces for the violin professors.  If they don't think you're ready, then you have to delay your recital. 

 There are a few intimidating things about this.

  #1 - I had to be ready to play any part of the 8 movements of music that I have been preparing, which is about 55 minutes of music.

#2 - The hearing takes place in a small office with three violin professors staring at you.

#3 - I knew if I didn't pass the hearing, my family that had already planned to come would have to cancel their plane tickets.

#4 - The week before the hearing, one of my pieces (the Fugue from Bach's Solo Violin Sonata in G minor) was sounding very bad and I could not for the life of me memorize it.

No pressure . .. . . right?

Well, in the few days before the hearing, I practiced as much as I could, and then something that my teacher said clicked that completely changed my playing.  When I was struggling with  playing the Bach Fugue, my teacher, Alex Woods, said, "Jared, listen with the bow."  What he meant was that I needed to stare at my bow and move it in a way that would create the best sound possible.  So . . . .I tried it and then, suddenly I was able to memorize the Bach Fugue and even play it relatively in tune.  This all happened in the weekend before my recital.

When the morning of my hearing came, I took the same approach that I did to the concerto competition and read more scriptures between brakes in my warming up practice session.  In doing this I was able to be calm and have the spirit with me.  When I went to play the hearing at 10:00 A.M. on Tuesday morning, I felt confident and calm.

As I started playing I was a little nervous and made mistakes, but I overall played very well.  My performance of the Bach Fugue was overall quite solid.  Afterwards, when I left I felt at peace and knew that I had nothing to worry about.  

Later, I found out that I passed! . . . .But, what's even better, the violin professors said it was the best they had ever heard me play.  You don't know how much that meant to me, and it gave me the confidence that my Senior Recital will be a success.

Therefore . . . I'm proud to say that I will be having my Senior Recital on Saturday, March 5th at 7:30 P.M. in the Madsen Recital Hall on BYU Campus!

What did I learn from this experience?

If you do your best, with the Lord's help, you don't have to worry.  Everything will work out in the end.