LO1: Identify their own strengths and develop areas for growth

LO2: Demonstrate that challenges have been undertaken, developing new skills in the process

LO4: Show commitment to and perseverance in CAS experiences

Since I have a strong passion for music and my experience with AIDA was very memorable, I was very excited when the school announced that there would be a musical called ‘Twelfth Night’. This time, I was given the opportunity to be keyboard 1, therefore I really wanted to make a strong contribution to the musical and dedicated a lot of time outside of school to practice my parts. Initially, I found some songs to be quite challenging because not only were there lots of complex chords and several very rhythmic parts, but these pieces were also supposed to be played at a fast tempo. Therefore, although I did practice before rehearsals, I found it difficult to keep up with the singing sometimes, but I had to keep playing – at times I only played with one hand because during these rehearsals, the piano was the only instrument present, meaning if I stopped playing, it would just be complete silence and the vocals would be left alone. Even if it was just playing the bass line or just a brief outline of the chords, I would still be able to support the singers in some way and I feel this ability to keep going has contributed a little bit to the improvement of my sight reading skills.

I specifically remember spending a lot of time practicing a song called “Count Malvolio”, especially part 2 (there were two parts to this song) because during the middle of the it there was an instrumental section that was technically demanding. Therefore, I practiced leading up to a rehearsal where we were going to run through the entire musical. However, when we got to “Count Malvolio”, the music director told me that they had to transpose the entire song up by two keys in order to fit the range of the person who would playing the character, Malvolio, therefore he said he would take care of that song alone. In that moment I was very sad to hear that because I had practiced a lot to make sure my part was solid, yet through this, I learnt the need to stay flexible and to be able to adjust according to the singer’s needs as that would allow for an overall better musical.