My youngest daughter had her first recital this evening. She is the youngest of her teacher's students, and has the least amount of experience with the trumpet (she's been in lessons since October).

She was amazing. She was the first on the program, playing Dedication by William Pelz. Even as recently as last night, she was practicing and struggling with a few of the parts. But under the pressure of performing for an audience -- there were a lot of us parents there as 11 students were performing that night -- she carried it off wonderfully.

During these months of practicing, I thought she was good, but that I was also listening through a mother's ears. A couple things I learned. First, the trumpet is craaazy-hard. Second, it takes years of practice to sound even remotely proficient at it. The older first and second year students didn't fare any better or worse than my daughter. Granted, their selections were probably harder, but at least my daughter sees that mistakes are common and inevitable, and realizes how much progress she has made since first starting lessons.

I hope she sticks with it. She really wants to play guitar (specifically, electric guitar), but I think even slight mastery of such a difficult instrument is valuable experience in and of itself. I hope I can keep convincing her.