This is the ostensible reason why we came here in the first place, and Em told me I should blog about this, so here goes. The main highlight here is that Matt tied for first place in his age group for the piano competition! It was a couple of days ago, and I hadn’t written about it because I thought it was covered already. Kira, Kristin, and Matt had each gotten photographs of the competition results, so I (erroneously) assumed that one of my siblings or my stepmother would have posted this on the proverbial Facebook. They didn’t because of some sort of social networking etiquitte, which is foreign to me. Anyway, congratulations, Matt!
Matt came here in response to an invitation from his piano teacher to compete in the 14th Annual Osaka International Music Competition. This is a world I haven’t ever experienced – it’s quite diametrically opposed to the most influential part of my music career. Matt has a schedule consisting of practice sessions in various small music studios around town. He and Kristin and Kira roll up to a place like this (not shown is the owner of the studio who came outside to greet us):
Everyone takes off their shoes before entering (and optionally puts on a pair of slippers to walk down the hallway).
Matt sits down at the piano, and flies his fingers over the keys for 1 hour. Kira sits down and reads her e-books. Kristin paces around the room, occasionally sitting down for a bit.
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- The room’s interior is built to the dimensions of tatami mats, which in turn are twice as long as they are wide.
The competition itself has multiple tracks and age brackets and spans multiple days. I haven’t had the energy to fully understand its structure after my pained efforts to gain a base level of competence with the greater Osaka train system. On a day when there is a competition, we go to a concert hall that is tucked away in a multi-story and often multi-purpose building. If we didn’t have inside knowledge, we never would have guessed these places were concert halls.
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- The building is missing floors because the hidden concert hall takes up more than one floor.
The speakers in the hallway play a live feed (sometimes with video) from the concert hall. Each participant plays one-at-a-time in front of a panel of judges that sit dispersed around the auditorium so as to get the best acoustics while not being distracted.
Matt gets a few minutes to warm up in a designated warm-up room.
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- This entrance room before the warm-up room smelled pungently of feet.
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- Slippers for inside the warm-up room
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- This soundproof warm-up room had two layers of glass.
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- Around the corner from the soundproof warm-up room, a bunch of teenagers were doing something that appeared very studious.
Then Matt goes back stage in preparation to perform. Sometimes the event staff let observers enter the auditorium. Sometimes they don’t, and we have to listen from the hallway. In either case, Matt doesn’t want his mom in there, so she always listens nervously from outside. If she starts pacing, Kira paces with her. If she remains sitting, Kira holds her hand.
The prior participant leaves the stage. The staff starts a timer. Matt walks up to the stage, bows quickly, sits down in a chair (not a piano bench), and begins his piece. If the timer gets to 7 minutes, the staff rings a bell, at which point Matt has to stop immediately, bow, and exit the stage. Anyone observing has to be completely silent. There are only 20 or so people in the auditorium at any given time. There is no applause. There is not even whispering. There is no photo or audio or video recording allowed in the auditorium. There is a widespread fear of disqualification for not following these rules. Matt comes out sweaty. We tell him he did great. Matt remarks about how great the auditorium sounded and asks Kristin for her technical breakdown of the performance.
Several minutes after the end of the performances in the category, the staff posts a printed sheet of paper with the results. People gather around and take photos.
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- Stained glass details in the auditorium lobby
Kristin plans logistics for the next day.
Matt’s final competition performance was truly skilled and expressive! It was a treat to watch. Later, he told us that he made up a couple of measures during a brief memory lapse. It was indistinguishable from the composition unless one knew it intimately (which we think the judges did not). Also perhaps related, Matt came back with a Scott Joplin sheet music book after his practice session today.
Tomorrow, Matt gets to play in a performance with all the medalists in which, I suspect, people will be able to applaud.
It’s a good thing you got married last year. We couldn’t afford Matt after all his successes!
Congratulations!
Yeah, he almost won $2,000 in prize money. But he got some invitations to a music camp in Germany and an international competition in Austria. Also, he got a Coach handbag, which he found quite amusing.
Oh man! This is not at all how I imagined this process going! Thank you for blogging about it Mike, pictures are helpful, but your descriptions are really important too. I imagined that he was playing before lots of people and a live audience for the competition. I didn’t realize it was quite as high pressure as it was. Congrats Matt!
That sounds pretty intense! Congratulations Matt!