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At my recital last month, I wondered about my role. First I was trying to greet the newer families while my friend acted as the general greeter. Then too, I had to greet the residents of the senior's home for whom we performed. I was trying to find chairs for several people once the seating became limited. Even though I came a half hour early, there were enough people entering at that time to impede my attempts to get the piano and microphone set up. Then a parent surprised me with a big floral arrangement which I wanted to display properly.

During the recital itself, I announced each of the numbers because some people couldn't see the program well enough to read it. Meanwhile, I was adjusting the seat between younger performers and for myself for the duets.

At the end, a resident wanted me to answer whose purse she held. Was it one my people's purse? Meanwhile, I was trying to have a refreshment before it was too late. Altogether too much stress. I think I need to hire more people to help me.

I am usually there close by, and sometimes a student will stumble and look at me and I just tell them to find a way to end it if it's a disaster. I don't keep the music handy, however. I let them play with the score if they're not quite memorized, but disasters usually happen due to nerves, and having the score there often doesn't help. Me bailing them out doesn't help either, but we reflect afterwards and devise plans for how to deal with such things for the next recital. It's a process and personally I don't agree with coddling students like this.

I think bailing them out could cause more stress for the student but I really don't know, having never done that. Teacher at the recital I attended focused on the scores the whole time. I'm not being critical, just found it interesting as I'd never seen or heard of teachers doing this before at performances, plus helping out the students during memory slips. I wonder if this teacher does this at festivals and competitions; wouldn't be allowed, would it?

I can still remember my eldest having his first big memory slip. Unfortunately, it happened in a competition, where no helping hand could come to his rescue. He came off the rails at a particular measure, stopped, and circled back a few lines. Then he went off the rails again at the same spot, and circled back again. The third time through he stumbled again, but busted through and was able to finish. He was toast, and left the venue quite distressed. He was twelve at the time.

That was a great, if painful, learning experience. He was due to play the same piece a week later (with an orchestra, no less) so he had to figure out what went wrong at that spot, and why when things went wrong he was unable to think holistically about the piece. He had never learned how to create recovery spots every few measures. Well, that learning experience ensured that he never again had such a breakdown.