Ensemble Performance

Our assessment did not start out very positively. My group had booked a final rehearsal just before the assessment and only three of us turned up to it. We could not get hold of the other two group members and as it neared the time of the assessment we had to prepare for the possibility that neither of them were going to turn up. Summer, Abi and I rehearsed quickly with piano chords that were thrown together in case this was to occur and I had to sing in for Yahya. Fortunately at the last minute they both turned up and the assessment went ahead. We started off with 'Reflection', this went mostly to plan. We were all in time and our dynamics were as we had rehearsed. I think Abi was panicked by what had happened prior to the assessment and got her hands muddled with the chords at one point, but you couldn't really tell as she did not make it obvious. I believe that we performed with confidence and a great range of instruments and sounds were used. I think that when we got around to performing that piece I lost a little bit of my folk style that I had been working hard on in rehearsals, it went a little bit into a musical theatre style, but mostly I feel like I stuck to the folk style. We got some really good feedback for the piece, the class said that they really liked the use of instruments and how we changed the piece to fit the style of folk. They also liked how it went from really upbeat and dancey to quite slow and sombre and then back to upbeat at the end.

The second piece, 'Man in the Mirror', I thought went very well. It started off shaky because the guitar chords were wrong which made the singing slightly off key. By the second verse we were back on track and all our harmonies were really good, the dynamics were great and all our voices blended really well together, which showed from the feedback we got from the class.

If we were to do this again I would definitely have arranged more rehearsal to get us more prepared for the final performance. I think the people you choose to work with are very important because everyone needs to pull together to ensure we perform as well as we possibly can in order to get the best grades possible. It isn't fair on the rest of the group when people are absent for rehearsals and let everyone else down when everyone has worked so hard. 

Overall I think we did the best we could have under the circumstances, however I do not feel like we performed to the best of our ability and I am quite disappointed about that. During this experience I have learned that for a group project to really be successful, there must be a level of respect that you have for the rest of your group. This is very important