Sitting in the Spotlight vs. Sitting in the Dark by Bryanna Evans After playing the cello for nearly nine years, I have come to a time in my musical career when I am no longer the musician, but the spectator. It was always a joy to get the pre-concert jitters and butterflies before entering the stage. Now, when I go to the concert hall, I watch the musicians as they get just as nervous as I once did before beginning their piece. After seeing both sides of a concert, I have discovered both musicians and spectators share the joy of attending, but experience it differently. As a cello player, in preparation for the spring concert, I had to practice every day for months to be able to learn the music. When in a rehearsal, I did not just memorize the notes on the page, but I also learned about the composer and his goals for the piece. I learned to play as musically as possible, to put myself into the music spiritually and emotionally. Over several months, I had built a lasting relationship with music that I will soon remember for the rest of my life. Now, sitting in the back of a dark auditorium, I do not get such an intimate feeling. I only have one chance to hear the music live, and that will only last for twenty minutes. The difference between hearing the music once and listening to the piece every day is that the musician knows what to listen for. The musician is aware of the difficulties in each section that everyone has worked for, while the spectator may go the entire night without realizing the hard work of the sections. But once the curtains are open and the concert is about to begin, both performers and audience members are on the edge of their seats. In the middle of a performance, I ask myself, “How is each person interpreting this?� As a musician, I would only be allowed to concentrate on the cello score and the conducting of my director; however, being able to feel the strings on my fingers and the bow in my hand was all that I needed to take away from the night. Similarly, now in a concert hall, the only parts of the concert I can focus on are the cello section—the frantic movement of their bows, the flipping of the pages of the score. As a spectator, I become like a sponge, absorbing every aspect of the section, waiting for what is to come next. Nonetheless, it is nothing like the nervous exhilaration of sitting in the spotlight. Lastly, I believe there are similarities to how either the musician or the spectator will remember a performance. As a spectator as well as a musician, there is always one detail that I remember, and that is lighting. Regardless of whether the light was aimed away
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