They begin with an audition, followed a few weeks later by a competition concert in which the students play with a group of their peers and are judged for their performance on two memorized pieces. The final performance and awards ceremony follows on a later date. During this event, the first place winners from every division perform in a large auditorium, and the other winning students are presented with their awards.
Last year (2014), Chase won first place in his division of the TASHCO competition, which was really exciting! And Avery passed his audition and played in the competition, but did not place. Of course, Avery was very disappointed. But I thought he played very well, especially considering he had only been taking lessons for about 8 months at that point. Regardless, sometimes the competition is fierce and winning an award is not easy to do!
THIS year (2015), however, both Chase and Avery advanced and competed and BOTH of them took FIRST place in their respective divisions. WOW!!! You can imagine how fun and exciting this was for our family! Both Chase and Avery were asked to play a piece in the final performance and received awards (and scholarship money!). I was so amazed and excited for them both!
Pictures and videos from the TASHCO competition:
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| Chase is outside the Thornton Rec Center, preparing to perform for the competition for his division. |
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| The bow before the performance: I always like to take a picture of the bow, because it shows humility and respect and faith and gratitude. The performance then develops confidence as he demonstrates his talent and hard work! |
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| Handsome young man! (But he still has a little bit of the little boy in there, too!) |
And here is the link to the video of one of Chase's pieces from this performance.
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| On the evening of Avery's competition (just one day after Chase's), it was snowing like crazy! So, I had to take this picture indoors before the competition. |
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| And here is the beautiful bow by Avery. :) |
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| Such an impressive young musician! |
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| This is a photo of Avery playing in the final Awards Ceremony for the 2015 TASCHO Young Artists Alliance Piano Competition as a FIRST place winner! Do you see what a big stage it was? I didn't get a photo of Chase doing the same (although Nate did get video which I may post later...it hasn't been uploaded yet), because when I took this picture of Avery,the flash was so bright and distracting that it startled me! And the quality of the picture wasn't that great anyway. So, just imagine Chase performing on this same stage a few minutes later and you will get the idea. :) |
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| Our TWO first place winners! Way to represent guys...yo! |
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| Here they are after the final performance, posing with their teacher, Cheryl Reeder, and some of her other award-winning students. It was such a fun evening! |
It was a fun surprise to have two winners in the family, but it was even better to realize that all of the practicing and hard work paid off for these guys. Worldly recognition can be fun and rewarding, but it's not the most important thing. I asked my boys if they thought it mattered to Heavenly Father who won this competition. And we all agreed that it probably didn't! But, what really mattered was the process of learning, practicing, persevering, self-discipline, preparing, listening to correction, working and having the courage to do something difficult. These are the qualities and characteristics that will help them in developing Christ-like characters and measuring up to His stature someday. And this is the reason that participating in these competitions is so worthwhile! Way to go, boys! We love you!
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