My debut as a pianist!

Tonight we had a 'musical evening' in the home of a couple from Beechworth. About 25 people attended, many of whom contributed to the evening's entertainment by playing the piano, clarinet, mouth organ or singing, and a great time was had by all.

With the encouragement of my piano teacher, I tentatively put my hand up to play a couple of pieces that I have been learning (both from Bastien Piano Basics, Book 1, so we're talking very simple here, folks).

I introduced my pieces by explaining that I have been learning piano for about 5-6 months, and so am still a beginner, but figured that if I waited till I was really good before playing in front of other people, we would all be waiting a long time indeed!

So, with my courage in hand, I sat down to play my two little pieces, and even though I had them perfect in practice at home, I did make a few mistakes; fluffing a few notes, and failing to observe the dynamics and phrasing as well as I had at home. But all in all, it went down well, and people commented on how well I'm going after learning for such a short time (and how gutsy it was for me to have a go in front of an audience that contained about half a dozen REALLY good pianists. When one of these said he needed a partner to play a duet with him, my enthusiastically tongue-in-cheek offer to do it brought the house down :-)

So, I can now say I have made my public performance debut on the piano, and as Margaret and Joe are planning to host these events on a regular basis, they said they look forward to tracking my progress, as I present different and more complex pieces over time.