...by the seat of my pants.

Tonight I was doing a concert with one of the youth bands whose percussion section I coach. I had a frantic phone call this afternoon asking if I could stand in with one of the other bands whose percussionist had let them down at the last minute. With zero rehearsal I sight read the stuff through time signature changes, tempo changes etc etc and felt I did a pretty good job. Oddly I find things like this more stressful when my students and their parents are around because I definitely don't want to look like a chump in front of them!

The concert was at a local private school and their facilities and equipment were RIDICULOUS. Far far far better than we have in the entire county and this was just one school... if only all schools were this well funded and resourced...