For the first time in foreverly, our band has been over subscribed and we have had to ak a player to sit out. Sadly no room on percussion either.
In respect of committment over technical ability, both of the players we had to choose from are totally committed and regular attenders. Eventually the conductor had a sort of audition to resolve it. All done very amicably too, the player taking the back seat is an adult and the lucky one is a child. The adult actually stepped down, wanting the best for the band on the day.
Im not sure there are many people around like this, so we are extremely fortunate to have characters with this level of genuine foresight and commitement to the continued development and progress of the band.
In relation to a previous comment re, a chlid going to bits on the contest stand, well, yes it can happen, but, in my experience, its quite often the more experienced players that suffer the anxieties of the contest stand. The youngsters in general seem to enjoy it more and are relatively relaxed about the whole thing (sweeping generalisation?)
Indeed the younger they are, competancy given as it were, the better in terms of reducng anxiety in the longer term. Anyway, at the end of the day, I was actually brought up to believe music making and banding was fun, so what the hec if a youngster or an adult or that matter has a bad day on the stand, theres always next time!
Apologies for typo's, is there a spell checker on here?