Holst Conducting Reflection

Brice Jackson

My biggest take away from my conducting round is expressiveness. I learned that when

in front of a large group of people, my facial expressions need to be more exaggerated. I found it

rather difficult to connect with that piece of music, even in the lyrical section. I now know that

that was the point in a way. This doesn’t mean that I don’t need to work on expressing what I

feel in the music. One thing that I intend on doing moving forward is to spend more time with

the piece with expressiveness in mind. If I start practicing earlier, I will be more comfortable

with allowing for the musicality of my movements to come out.

One thing that I thought was really interesting is that I put myself into the character of

confidence before I went up to the podium and it resulted in me being very stiff and

expressionless. Next time, I’m going to see what happens if I channel a character of relaxation.

Hopefully this will help bring out more expressive qualities in my movements and faces. I now

realize that eye contact is important, but ultimately that’s just looking at people that are looking

back at you. If you aren’t communicating anything, why be on the podium in the first place?