Practicing while warming up for a performance

[brassmedic]

If you suggested that basketball players shouldn't practice free throws on the court before a game because "they should have done that in practice" and it "spoils it for the audience" I think you'd be laughed out of the arena. Just sayin'...

I'll offer a different perspective.

One of my very favorite sequences of sounds in the world is the sound of an orchestra onstage before and then at the beginning of a concert. I love the transition from complete disorganization (every individual playing their own thing with no coordination to anyone else) to loose organization (tuning) to the total organization of the music they play together.

For me, that's a kind of magic I don't get anywhere else.

Yes! Such an important experience that Beethoven hinted at it in the opening of the 9th Symphony. And the movie Fantasia starts with the musicians casually walking out on stage and noodling on their instruments before taking a tuning note.