[Bards] Question on performance judging forms

[Scott Barrett]

Yes, well said, but as I mentioned to Master Ulf, that may be the 
beginning.
I see the first and primary obstacle as audience interest or engagement.
If you don't have that, there are some basics that need to be polished. 
Those basics may need to be applied to a particular piece, or to your 
overall style.
Once you've shown you can hold the attention of the audience, 
especially with a challenging piece, judges can move on to more 
specific aspects of the performance, such as timing, clarity, the 
material performed, etc.
Master Ulf had a well defined stance on this and may be able to give 
this viewpoint more clarification.

Me, I look at it like this...

First, gain audience attention.
  Show a developed sense of crowd awareness and mood. If you hit a 
cheery crowd with a funeral eulogy, you deserve the thump of every drum 
you hear at the growing hafla.

Second, maintain audience immersion.
  Understand your material and the audience well enough to be intimate 
with the audience emotionally. I usually describe this as speaking or 
singing with us, even if we are silent, rather than speaking AT us. 
It's good ol' engagement and reaction, pure and simple.

Third, enlighten audience horizons.
  Let them see medieval, kingdom or local history with your material and 
technique. Many folks will never read Arthurian tales, Irish sagas or 
research Ansteorran legends, but they can get them from us. For a lot 
of us, this is a huge exercise because we want to offer original works 
while being true to history in form and subject. I like a well 
performed historic piece, but I love an original written with period 
elements.

Once these first three are delivered, scoring specific performance 
techniques and material can commence. Well, that is how I judge, anyway.

Fourth, increase audience anticipation.
  This one is tricky and I can only share my own experience. It comes 
from not only performing pieces you 'own', but regularly providing new 
material that achieves the first three. This can't be judged in a 
single competition, however, and has no place on the form. We don't 
need judges scoring something as nebulous as wordfame (or in my case, 
infamy).

~Finnacan




  Thursday, May 11, 2006, at 11:40 PM, Gerald Norris wrote:

> Naw!
>  
> When I'm judging I'm looking for solid entertainment value.  Can they, 
> man or woman or child, truly capture the audience.  A singer who can 
> quiet the halls, a musician who sets feet to tapping, the story teller 
> with every eye on them; that's what I look for.
>  
> As for the perfect performance?  It's live!  I expect flaws in 
> performance, and good performers will learn to use them.  It is part 
> of what live musicians have to struggle against; the plethora of 
> canned music that has been mixed, remixed, and polished.  As a former 
> teacher once stated, "If you can't be heard making a mistake, that 
> usually means you can't be heard at all."
>  
> Gerald.
>
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