On Tuesday the 6th of September at 1.20PM I sat down at the piano in the hallway next to the student centre to perform for students of the school. So how did I get myself into this situation? As I entered DP2, I got a new music teacher, Mr.Kim and I told him that an area that I would like to work on was public performance. Unfortunately for me, Mr.Kim stayed true to his word that he would help me with this aspect of music by giving me a completely unfamiliar piece that I had never even heard before and two weeks to prepare for a lunchtime performance. The piece that I would be playing was Chaconne by Yiruma and after two weeks of intense practice where I somehow managed to squeeze in practice everyday to an already busy schedule, the day rolled around.

At exactly 1.25 PM 5 minutes after the bell had rung and a decent amount of students had gathered, I introduced myself and the piece that I would be playing. At this point I was nervous beyond control and I was seriously starting to doubt my abilities and was considering just walking out of there, however, I sat down at the piano, took a few moments to calm myself and began the piece. To be honest, at the start of the piece I made quite a few mistakes which I mainly accredit to my nervousness however I feel like I managed to successfully cover these up and towards the end of the piece I genuinely started to feel comfortable and it was at this point where I feel I did best which could also clearly be seen after I checked the recording afterwards. Overall, it was a completely new experience but once I finished I have to admit that I couldn’t see why I was so stressed out and to be honest I am looking forward to the next time I have to perform an unfamiliar piece which is, yup, you guessed it… in two weeks.

Learning outcomes:

Demonstrate that challenges have been undertaken, developing new skills in the process: By putting myself in an unfamiliar situation, it was a real challenge for me to undertake in order to develop my performance skills however I feel like I definitely achieved this goal.

Identify your own strengths and develop areas for personal growth: Even while I was playing the piece, I was analysing my performance and all of my strong points and also all of the places where I didn’t do well. I identified certain areas where I had to improve.