Truly humbled

Tuesday night was our last band concert of the year.  It was also my last as a band director for a while.   Next year I will be teaching elementary general music (notice I did not say vocal).  While this is something that I have done before it has always been mixed in with teaching band.  I have never not been a band director. 

I was trying to play down the whole thing if for no other reason than to keep myself sane.  I only rehearsed one piece to conduct that evening and kept backstage most of the evening warming up the groups.  I had a feeling something had been planned but was not really sure what.  When the HS band took the stage there were pieces of posterboard laying all over the stage.  Before the last piece, which I was conducting, we recognized our band seniors and parents.  Then the microphone got taken over......

The HS band kids had made posters.  There was much yelling and screaming and clapping.  For 9 years I have been the queen of all covert operations in the band department.  They had pulled one over on me and I was very humbled and touched.  I try to avoid public speaking at all costs.  I can get up in front of a band but speaking to their parents honestly scares the poop out of me.  In retrospect, I should have maybe prepared something because there are so many things I wanted to say.  

I really don't remember much of what happened after that.  I know I conducted my last piece of band music for a while.  I have no clue how it sounded.   As a band director, you spend so much time hearing these pieces as you rehearse and fixing mistakes and pointing things out to the kids in the music and studying the score that by the time you get to the concert all you hear in your head is this band that plays it how you have taught it.  I have walked off stage thinking we sounded great and then the recording told me differently.  I'm still debating whether I'm even going to listen to this performance or not.