Back when I was doing the bLoke Conservatory once every 2 or 3 months (hitting three or four of the nation's top orchestral players all in a two-day weekend for private instruction) I took my son with me one of those times. When I did my Chicago stop - and the lesson was in lawn chairs in the parking lot of Ravinia (with their tailgate open and with a citronella candle lit to discourage bugs)...
It was during a rehearsal when a Mozart symphony was being rehearsed. My son listened to that while I was doing my lesson. I took him up in the Sears Tower, bought him a good Chicago pizza, and we then rushed on to the next place. (At that time, Alan was still in Milwaukee, and I had to bust my tail to get there only two hours later for that scheduled lesson.)
summary:
As far as Chicago was concerned - and being in a terrible rush, I felt like taking my son up to the top of the Sears Tower, feeding him a Chicago pizza, and entertaining him with the Chicago Symphony (for free) was a pretty good hurried visit.
post script:
"Hey bloke, what was it like having four different masters critique you're playing in four different ways?"
Each time, I would arrive home with my head spinning (a combination of all of that information mixed with driving exhaustion). After two or three weeks, all of that information expressed in different ways sort of came together as my mind would realize that a lot of what was said to me was synonymous, but just expressed in different ways.
This may raise some eyebrows, but I would say that - if any private instruction teacher tells someone that they should not be studying with any other teacher, it might be time to find another primary teacher.
...something else:
I took one of my shop employees with me one time (who was also studying the tuba at a local university). After one of the lessons (whereby they were allowed to sit in and listen), we were driving frantically on to the next lesson and another city, and my employee said to me, "You sound better than Blah-Blah" to which I responded, "I'm not studying with them to copy their sound. Rather, I'm studying with them to gather their insights in countless other ways."
funny:
Even though my employee who accompany me on that particular trip was in college, they were already married at that time. Cell phones were already a thing (I didn't have one), and I now recall that they called their wife when I was driving from that lesson to the next one, whereby their wife answered how the weather was where we were... to which my employee answered "the weather's really nice, other than the fact that we are driving into about a 95 mph headwind".
warning: a JOKE (you know: for LAUGHING at)
well...Its sort of a joke...
