Wednesday, February 16, 2011

Picky, picky, picky


My daughter is in a community children's choral group and recently, all four choirs in the group presented a concert together. On the program was music composed by their guest conductor, Jim Papoulis.

As usual, there were extra rehearsals. Many, many extra rehearsals. I could tell she was getting exhausted. After one particularly long weekend, however, she said to me, " Mom, I think you're going to really enjoy this concert."

"I always do."

"No, no. This one you will REALLY like. Mr. Papoulis is v-e-r-y picky."

Joy. The child understands the road to excellence is paved with pickiness. AND she can tell good enough is not good enough.

Go, pickiness! My mantra for revision today.

(Just to clarify that I think pickiness per se doesn't necessarily lead to excellence. I am sure you can think of many examples of unnecessary, compulsive pickiness that leads to nothing but hair-pulling.)

(And yes, I did enjoy the concert very much.)

4 comments:

tanita✿davis said...

Oho. You would, then, love, love, LOVE our choir master, who wrote the word DICTION in massive letters and pointed at it all night at rehearsal last night. We are getting ready to do Vaughn Williams' The Unknown Region plus Rossini's Petite Messe Solennelle in concert, and he is losing his mind to pickiness.

It's fun anyway.

Yat-Yee said...

Choir masters losing their minds doesn't concern me as long the choir members aren't. Shh. Don't tell Bill.

Bish Denham said...

I suppose like everything there is a time to be picky and a time to relax. But to make something shine, takes hard work, and that can be mean being picky.

Sultan said...

I guess in the end the answer really is constructing things so balance and harmony are the final outcome.