EMPM

I just played a concert last night. It went really well. I had actually played my program on Saturday already, in a little mini conference-concert that I organized at the music school. Basically, I had done some research on my pieces and their composers. I gave a little talk where I compared the two in their composition and history, and then played them. I wanted to give my students a chance to get a little more background in music history, and also to give them a chance to hear me play because I think it's important.

Which leads me to the subject I wanted to write about today: the music school where I teach.

It's a school with currently about 280 students and 16 teachers. Basically, none of the teachers are full-time. I, for example, have about 10 hours of teaching a week. I think there are teachers who have more, but there are also teachers who have much less. It just depends on how many students want to learn that instrument. The school is not a part of the national system of music conservatories here in France. It's independent, and it's technically run by the officers of the association that is made up of the parents and students. On the day-to-day basis, we have a music director and a secretary who do lots of that work.

The school went through a time about 5 years ago where it almost had to close for financial reasons, and so they've re-thought through a lot of things recently and given a new spin on things. Notably, we are much more focused on having the students play in ensembles and building their ensemble skills than they were before. This demands a lot more coordination between the teachers, and they actually created the director's post 2 years ago to help organize all that. I personally find this way of working exciting and interesting, but for some of the teachers who've been around awhile, they sometimes have a hard time adapting, or wanting to adapt, which I can understand.

One thing that is complicated is that we don't have a building or one place where we can give our lessons. We're spread out in various municipal rooms in several little towns around Melle, which makes the kind of coordination we need to have very difficult. Not to mention that those teachers who need a lot of materials (drum set, keyboards, etc.) are constantly having to move things around. We're not sure what can be done, but something needs to happen.

In the violin realm, I have 17 students. 2 of them have been taking lessons for 5 or 6 years, and for one of them, I'm her 6th teacher! The rest have been taking lessons for less time, but obviously changing teachers so often isn't good for them, and this has had repercussions on a technical, musical, and even psychological level. One of the first things I did with these 2 students was to assure them that I have no plans to leave anytime soon.

I really enjoy the opportunity to teach. I think that there's a lot of potential to make some very interesting things happen in this school, and I'm excited at the fact that I won't have tons of students moving every year or two, like I did in Paris. Hopefully I'll be able to build something that will be good for the students and the school, and will be interesting for me, as well!