Growing up, one of my least favorite things to do was attend recitals. I think most of the other students and audience members felt the same way. So it has been my personal mission to make our studio recitals not only tolerable, but immensely enjoyable and something that students and families look forward to. It made my day a couple weeks ago when I asked a friend if he would run the sound system for our Christmas recital this year. He eagerly agreed and said that when his daughter stopped taking lessons several years ago, his biggest disappointment was that he would miss the Christmas recital. (Looks like I’ve got a sound man for life, huh?! )

As you all know, it takes a TON of planning and preparation to pull off a recital, but it is so worth it! And the students love being able to invite their relatives and friends to be a part of the Christmas celebration with us. It is unavoidable, though, that every year there are far-off family and friends who would love to be here, but just can’t make the trip. Well…in one of the most exciting discoveries of the year, I think this will be a problem of the past because now there is a way that anyone can attend the recital virtually! Enter: USTREAM.

USTREAM is a free online television station that enables registered users to broadcast their shows and events via the internet to viewers around the world! I’ve been exploring the site this past week and not only can you broadcast through your channel, but you can also record and archive events so that they can be accessed and viewed at a later date. We are just itching to give this a try in my studio, so we will be live streaming the Christmas recital this year and you are invited to join us and be part of the experiment!

The recital will be on Thursday, December 16, at 7:00 p.m. (CST). Just go to my USTREAM channel: http://www.ustream.tv/user/nataliewickham at that time to watch the live broadcast. Since this is our first time giving it a try, there may be glitches, but hopefully you will bear with us and give us feedback that will help us make improvements in the future. And if any of you decide to live stream a studio event, I’d love to know about it so I can tune in and watch. Plus, I think there are tons of other possibilities for this technology. For instance, there’s an option to invite viewers to be co-hosts, so I could see multiple studios across the country connecting with each other for a joint event of some sort. If any of you are interested in trying something like this, we should brainstorm and see what we can come up with. What FUN!