Ignorance is bliss. When you’re a young piano student, you have no idea that playing in piano recitals can be stressful. I am always amazed by the five-year-olds at my studio who hop on stage as though they’re still in their PJ’s in their living room and play through their piece without breaking a sweat. Teens, unfortunately, don’t enjoy this same ability to turn a blind eye to the hundreds of eyes watching them. Couple this heightened self-consciousness with the ability (or the desire!) to assert themselves and you often end up with teenage students who bow out of piano recitals all together no matter how hard you try.
Making Piano Recitals More Appealing to Teenagers
As piano teachers, we know that performance experience is of paramount importance. Without performances it is difficult to be motivated to really polish your piano repertoire. Without goals it’s difficult to be motivated to practice. And while you’ll likely still be faced with a few “mysterious” and last-minute illnesses the day of the recital amongst your teen population, try some of these suggestions to make the piano recital experience more appealing to your teenage piano students:
1. Don’t be lame – If you have a sizeable teenage student population, then plan a separate piano recital to be a “teens only” event. Teens often do not want to be lumped in with young children, so separate your recital into age groups and treat each group accordingly. You don’t need cute programs and colorful certificates for this age group, but your little ones still love them! By dividing your recital into two age groups you’ll banish some of the reluctance.
2. Hold your teen piano recital in a cool venue – Make the recital seem more like a gig and your teens will be more likely to invite their friends (think coffee shop or open mic venue). Friends are of utmost importance to teens, so if you can hook into their desire to be with their buddies you’ll be much more likely to have good participation. Consider allowing their friends to perform on the instruments they themselves may play to encourage a collaborative atmosphere.
3. Include some technology – Teens are cyber-crazy creatures these days. Put your program on a projector, live stream the recital over the internet (watch copyright laws here), videotape their piano performances and post to Facebook for sharing and/or create a studio youtube channel and fill it with your teens’ performances. Add a “best phone photo” contest to the recital and give a prize to the person with the best photo of a performer taken with their cell phone. It’s all about relevancy.
4. Consider having a themed piano recital – Think “Music of U2”, “Beatles Night”, “Video Game Music” etc. Not only will this be fun for the audience, but for your teens as well. If your students are performing music they view as “cool” they will be less self-conscious about performing.
5. Create opportunities for your teen piano students to meet before the recital – Host some mini-master classes for your teens so they can get to know each other and create some friendships with those who have similar interests. There’s strength in numbers and they’ll be more likely to be comfortable performing for peers they know.
6. Serve food – Entice those teen boys with a pizza reception afterwards, or “make your own sundae” or “Nutella crepes”…be creative 🙂
7. Create opportunities for collaboration – Encourage duet pairings for your recitals. Teens are social creatures and they’ll love the idea of having someone to “lean on” on stage.
I have never been a believer in making performances mandatory. Some students are absolutely mortified at the very thought of performing… and forcing them to perform takes away the joy that piano can provide at a time in their life when they need an emotional outlet the most. However, with enough ingenuity you can create a setting that will have your teenage piano students begging for the next recital.
One way to ensure your teens are enthused about recital participation is by giving them repertoire they love. Our PianoBookClub teen books are so popular teens are literally begging for more! Check out how you can get infinitely reproducible books of repertoire for just $8 here.
Dana says
Yes! Piano recitals are totally lame! Wonderful ideas here as always. One other idea to consider- completely remove the word recital from your vocabulary and replace it with the word concert. Kids and teens want to be like performers they see on tv and in videos. These musicians are not having recitals- they are having concerts and as your post said performing gigs.
Andrea says
Hi Dana,
Good point! It’s all in how you present something 🙂
Rebecca Brown says
With teens, especially, I always allow them to choose one of the pieces they play. I choose one that is good for building their repertoire, using skills they are working on, etc. The student chooses what that is simply interesting and/or fun to them. Many teens will ask to play pop songs, etc. But I’m always surprised by one or two students who, even though they can choose from anything, will select an exciting classical piece they’ve heard.
Duets are also great for this age group. I almost always encourage siblings and/or friends to work something up together. Not necessarily two at the piano, either. I have two brothers who both take piano, and one of them also takes guitar. Using one of the piano songs from their method book, they arranged their own piano & guitar duet….and it sounds amazing! They will be playing that in this year’s recital.
My studio has the advantage of having students on all instruments. So we are able to put together small ensembles, etc. Students always enjoy that. In one recital, my daughter had written the vocals and piano part for a great pop-ish song. We were able to add a drummer and guitar to it. They got to perform as a whole band in the recital. It was the hit of the program! And inspired a lot of young students! If you don’t have these extra instruments within your studio, it’s not hard to find them. She did a similar thing before I opened this studio, and had no problem talking the guitarist and drummer from our church into playing for her.
Andrea says
Hi Rebecca,
I totally agree – collaboration is key!
Thanks for commenting 🙂
Jessica says
Great ideas!! The Registered Music Teachers Association in my community holds and annual “Teens in Jeans” recital. We allow them to dress down, come casual, and we serve pizza after. It usually turns out to be our most well attended recital of the year!
I make all my students dress up for their other recitals, but if coming in their grubs encourages the teens to play, than I’m all for it! LOL!
Andrea says
I LOVE that…”Teens in Jeans”. So cool, and yes, very true. Dressing up in a stuffy outfit is not high on a teen’s list of things they want to do. I don’t enforce a dress code either. Usually, if they view the event to be important to them, they’ll naturally dress nice anyway!
Happy Teaching!
Johanna Russell says
I am doing a world music themed recital. I want to do a cool passport or a train ticket or something for a program, but not sure how to do this and how to make a template. Any ideas? I love your blog. I also am in the piano game and piano book club. I love it!
Judy K says
I jumped on the Star Wars frenzy and held a fun Star Wars piano recital a few weeks ago. There were songs from every episode played by children, teens and adults alike. Two college students provided a wonderful narrative of the Star Wars saga between episodes and songs. All participants dressed in costume as much as they cared to. Thanks to Pinterest, we prepared a menu of refreshments with fun names (Yoda Soda, Hutt Dogs, Princess Leia (Cinnamon) Buns) which the families all contributed to. It was an unforgettable night.
Andrea says
So cool Judy – that sounds amazing!
Christi says
Help! My own kids are little and so I run a very small piano studio – only 7 students right now. Most of my students are elementary-aged girls, plus one 7th grade girl… and one (very talented) 7th grade boy thrown in the mix. Any magical ideas for making my recitals less uncool for the one teenage boy stuck in a group of little girls?
Kendall says
I know this post is very old, but I had just a few things to say. While these ideas are amazing, especially if you had a mostly teenage range of students, there are some things that I prefer about being all together. While there are teenager that aren’t a huge fan of recitals, at my studio most of them are willing to at least try it. It’s the preteens that we have a little more trouble with. They aren’t quite old enough to help out with the younger ones or play super advanced pieces, but are too old to turn a blind eye like our preschool / elementary students can. Tips and tricks for this age group at recitals would be amazing! The one thing we do as a studio is try to create a sense of family, we have quite a few homeschool families with multiple kids all different ages, so split recitals wouldn’t work for us. With our teens most of them are assigned a “buddy” or are seated next to a younger student (especially if they’ve been there awhile) it helps some of our little’s nerves and help keeps the squirrelly ones somewhat on track. Our little ones LOVE looking up to the big kids! A lot of the teenagers in our studio are like celebrities for these kids!