How do music lovers who are not accomplished performers cope with a performance excursion? The prodigy, the budding genius, the rock star in-waiting will of course leap at the chance to travel and perform; but there are a significant number of students who will feel insecure, if not reticent, to showcase their burgeoning skills in unfamiliar environments.
In actual fact, these tours can help these hesitant students become more motivated.
Excursions Inspire
School music trips to places of great natural beauty can help uncertain pupils find the right amount of inspiration to continue nurturing their craft. In an often-overlooked way, visiting havens of natural glory like Lake Garda, Venice or the Black Forest can inspire students beyond the mundane confines of the classroom. These locations take the skills learned in class and magnify them with emotion.
Excursions Are Career Windows
A look into the career of a performer can give students on school music trips the focus to continue working hard on their skills, because they can picture themselves taking up this very career. They will have the chance to experience the life of a semi-professional or professional performer on the road. Time in Prague or Hamburg will give them a genuine taste of performing outside the safety of the classroom.
Excursions Provide Access To Talent
Students on school music trips can learn from the best. Keen students may lap up exposure to the best and the brightest performances, but it will also provoke unsettled students to consider their craft in a new way. Teachers do give their blood, sweat and tears to raise the best young performers, but professionals who work in symphonies or at music schools offer students a very different and unique insight.
Excursions Refine Expectations
The shaking up of expectations and assumptions on school music trips may assist some students to commit more fully to performing, because performing in public is nothing like performing in class. Whether they go to Salzburg, The Loire Valley or even Disneyland, students will have their eyes opened to new sounds, new stages and a fresh understanding that they simply cannot grasp from when in the confines of a classroom.
Excursions Define True Commitment
Wherever students may travel to perform, be it Tuscany, Krakow or Munich, the moment of initial nervousness giving way to exuberance can demonstrate their real commitment to performance. It is one thing to pick up an instrument before peers in the classroom, but it is another matter entirely to do so on excursions before the unknown public. But should the risk be taken and satisfaction result, students will gain confidence and know that they should keep playing.