When you go to a music competition, what's it for?
When I was 23 I took over as interim conductor of a high school band. But this wasn't just any band - it was one of the best in the state. When I was in high school, this was the band I'd salivated over. Each year as I watched them at festival a small part of me wished I had been at this school, in this band.
When I walked into the music department the first thing that greeted me was a trophy cabinet. Nearly 30 years of being in the top three bands in the state, and the plaque from being one of only three Australian bands to have performed at the Midwest Clinic.
And now I was at the helm.
Unsurprisingly, I quickly discovered how deeply the ensemble's identity was tied to competing (and winning).
The entire year was focussed towards those competitions and maintaining their reputation as winners. As the competitions loomed ever closer, sanity and wellbeing were gradually put on hold as calendars were cleared for extended rehearsals, extra sectionals and residential camps. Students, families and staff martyred themselves at the altar of getting another one of those plaques. By the time Term 3 (the period when the competitions happened) ended, everyone collapsed in a heap, exhausted.
And for what?
A piece of wood and metal to put on the wall. And a feeling of joyous victory or crushing defeat depending on what colour it was.
Oh, and a piece of paper, where your worth as an ensemble is distilled into a score out of 100.
Of course it wasn't all grim. There were many great things the students got from these experiences. The sense of camaraderie, team spirit, support and pride was wonderful. The rituals the students built around these events - like tearful gift-giving and speech making to and by graduating students - were a testament to their care and respect for their colleagues. Seeing students work hard and achieve things they didn't think they could. Like the student who practiced for weeks on a really hard lick and finally got it. They also developed great ensemble and technical skills.
But what bothered me was how the students talked about themselves and their work based on their competition results. All that great stuff could be so easily negated, minimised or forgotten because they "lost" or "only came third" or "they beat us". In the quest to avoid these detestable outcomes they even asked me to yell at them (!).
Even in that first year, as a young, idealistic teacher, I was determined to shift the culture away from this external validation of success. (This now seems pretty ironic, given my own attachments to prizes, awards, labels and recognition as an indicator of personal worth when I was a student).
Was it because I felt swamped by impostor syndrome, and felt I couldn't maintain the winning streak? Did I want to soften the blow when I inevitably led them to defeat? Maybe there was an element of that. But ultimately I think I saw it as an act of protection. I knew that I couldn't control the adjudicators decisions. If we put all our hopes, dreams and self worth in the hands of three totally subjective strangers, where would that leave us? What would that mean for all the effort, sacrifice and hard work that led up to the performance?
It took a few years of concerted effort to shift the students' focus from pleasing an adjudicator to giving the audience the gift of musical transformation.
It started with putting the onus of evaluation back on the students:
We invested precious rehearsal time grappling with these questions, because without the answers what were we even doing?
So much of our classical music system is based on others telling us what we've done wrong - or worse, that we are wrong. And us believing them.
How many times have you had a teacher, mentor or conductor point out an error? It's impossible to enumerate. As a result, we internalise both the habit of error detection, and often the second step of equating our errors with our personal value as a human. I did bad becomes I am bad.
When this is what we've had modelled it's so easy to repeat, in the false belief that this is 'teaching'. And the false definition of success being to eliminate errors.
But simply pointing out errors isn't teaching. It's a recipe for shame, guilt, anxiety, toxic perfectionism and avoidance. Furthermore, it completely misses why we all got into this music game in the first place. Music made us feel something special. Something we couldn't get elsewhere. Something that kept us coming back to practice, play in our ensemble or pick up a baton.
That something is different for everyone. Maybe it's the problem solving process that you love. Or being unified with the rest of your ensemble, part of something bigger than yourself. Or the feeling of tearing up at a poignant chord or crescendo.
I've never seen any of these things on an adjudication rubric.
Competitions measure the craft of music making. Can you build a perfectly in tune chord? Can your ensemble sculpt a crescendo while maintaining balance? Can you create a beautiful tone?
These are all important skills that help us achieve those magic feelings, our 'somethings'. The poignant chord will be more moving if it's in tune. The crescendo will be more dramatic if it stays balanced.
But these are just steps toward the higher purpose of making music, feelings and magic.
We work on the craft so that we and the audience can focus on the art.
The craft skills are not the magic feelings that great art elicits. They are a means, not an end.
When we make the craft the end goal, we miss the art. And lose the heart.
Then why do we so often focus solely on craft?
Maybe because it's far harder to measure art. It's difficult to write a rubric for.
But if we did try to evaluate our impact that way, we might ask:
During my four years with the high school band we did a lot of work expanding, challenging, and questioning our definitions of success, and the purpose of attending contests and competitions.
In my second year at one of these big events our adjudicator was a big fancy band composer. Both onstage and on tape he basically said, “your conductor let you play this music and it’s rubbish. I feel sorry for you. I can't adjudicate you because I don't understand or like this music"
The piece we played was Soulström by Jodie Blackshaw. It's a 14-minute meditation on grief and loss which I painstakingly chose because the school community had just been through the Black Saturday bushfires. This music is real art. Highly original, unusual and with something to say. The emotional journey we took together with this piece is one of the defining moments of my career, which I've written about in detail here.
One of my proudest moments was the rehearsal after the festival when we did a post-performance review. The first thing we did was share our own experiences and reflections on the performance. We didn't read the comments or listen to the tape, because that would show that we prioritised the adjudicators opinions and values over our own.
Unprompted, our piccolo player said “That MAN!! He just didn’t get what we were trying to do”.
What this statement told me was that the students were shiftingfrom relying on the adjudicator's opinion, to measuring success against what they sought to achieve.
What mattered far more than the adjudicator's jibes was the composer's text message after that exact same performance:
“To Ingrid and band. Words cannot describe the pride and overwhelming beauty I am feeling right now. Not only did you perform with every ounce of effort capable, you gave me and the audience your soul. You played so well. I am coming to Melbourne to meet you all and hear this piece live! With all my heart, well done.”
Did having our own definition mean we abandoned the craft and played out of tune, balance etc? Of course not. In fact, it meant we could take on board the valuable comments the adjudicators did make about how to improve the craft.
The difference was, we knew we were improving the craft in order to make the art more impactful. Not to sound perfect, but to tell a story. Not to get a rating, but to make an artistic statement.
That experience went such a long way to shifting the values of the group toward giving the audience a transformative emotional experience, rather than pleasing a couple of adjudicators who may or may not be skilled at giving useful feedback. It also allowed us to open the discussion on how subjective adjudication can be - especially if there are no or poor rubrics.
Did it mean I was personally impervious to our scores, ratings and placements in the competition? Of course not. I grew up in the system too. Of course I wanted us to win. I wanted the personal validation and a trophy too. I wanted to continue the legacy. I wanted the kids and parents to like, accept and respect me. I wanted them to think I was good at my job. Winning the competition seemed to be the way of getting that.
I did feel disappointed when the results were read out and I felt the outcome didn't match our effort. But in those moments I became increasingly aware of the past values and patterns that were driving those desires.
Just as I was teaching the students to build their own definition of success, I was challenged to do the same. I had to confront the fact that I too was seeking external validation that I couldn't control, through somebody else's eyes.
I had to do my own, difficult internal work to realise that both how the band performed, and the adjudication results, were not a reflection of my value as a person, teacher or musician. To detach my identity and value from my performance.
These days I don't take students to competitions anymore. But in the professional orchestral world, there are plenty of substitutes for adjudicators: reviewers, journalists, and poorly constructed conductor feedback forms.
Now I make sure that before I read or listen to the comments of others I do my own reflection first. And if I'm working with students, I get them to do the same. Sometimes we do it with the judging rubric if there is one, but more often on criteria that THEY believe are important. Measuring their performance against their own definition of success.
And whether I'm alone, leading a group, or running a masterclass I always begin with what went well to try to retrain our natural and culturally reinforced reflex to jump to the negative and point out the errors.
This helps all of us develop our own internal values compass and define our own success.
To improve the craft, in service of the art.
Ingrid Martin
22 July 2025
A true story about why we do what we do, and the power of music and process to transform ourselves, our ensembles and our audiences.
Why do I shudder when people use the word ‘talented’ to describe me? Why would I ask journalists and marketers to remove it from articles about me? Though it might seem like praise, the word ‘talent’ actually holds us and our people back.
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