The opportunities to show ourselves up

[mistralx]

Hey guys,

I'm sure that many of you (like me) are not proffesional piano players - I mean, you didn't graduate from the musical school or academy (and will not).
I am wondering if you are satisfied with playing only at home, only for your friends, your family and of course for yourself, or maybe you want to show your work, your skills and your practised pieces for the wider audience?

If so, what are the oportunities for amateur players to show themselves up in front of the wider audience? Are there in your countries any piano competitions for amateurs? Maybe some cyclic recitals when everybody can present himself?
Please share your experiences and approach to this thing

 

[pjjslp]

All I have done thus far is make videos and share them with my Facebook friends, and play for visiting family. When I find the time and money for lessons, my goal may be to work toward a recital, but we'll see. Memorizing is very difficult for me these days.

I mentioned to a friend possibly setting up a music "club," where a group of interested amateurs could get together monthly and play for each other, but we haven't made that happen yet. Work and family have a way of making things challenging 

[visitor]

there was postings about such a music performance club in the UK on here a while ago, they rented out/met in one of the recital rooms at Steinway hall, so you could form one like that and fees/dues could help pay for renting a space/recital hall.

if you sign up for a studio/lessons, decent ones will set these up for students
this is also the same for signing up for lessons through a community music academy or sign up for lessons at a local community/junior college.

recording and posting to youtube is one way to mock perform and works decently well at forcing you to play for an 'audience' even though it's not live. but youtube does let you livestream, which is interesting, I have wanted to explore the idea of collaborating to product a youtube livestream recital, could be done at just one location or coordinated with multiple people remotely.

you can seek out and create opps by playing at old folks./nursing and retirement homes, this is highly recommended and worthwhile due to how much you'll enrich the lives of those people and also very personally rewarding.  same could be said in some hospital settings for long term admitted patients.

you can look at and talk to local hotels with pianos in the lobby and see if you can come do a program free of charge for people

it's all out there some way, just get creative. the first idea of the amateur clubs is cool, nothing like that around me here, i've thought about trying to organize such a movement...

[visitor]

fyi this was active for a little while....
https://www.pianostreet.com/smf/index.php?topic=46764.0

[mistralx]

@pjjslp This is a good idea to share with friend on FB. If it's not a secret, could you share your age and location (I mean country) with me? Maybe u can also share some youtube profile to let me hear your works?

@visitor Your post exceeded my expectations, thank you for so many ideas! As you write, I can even combine business with pleasure. Unfortunately London is far away from my place, but maybe in Berlin or Prague (and of course Warsaw) there are simmilar activities.