All of our nieces and nephews were involved with music in middle school through high school, so we went to their concerts. The middle school strings were... not always pleasant. When the music director would introduce a piece with, "The kids worked very, VERY hard on this one..." we learned to recognize that as code for, "Use your earplugs if you brought 'em!"

By high school the strings had mastered their craft. The vocalists, who were nice in middle school, were "DAMN that was good!" in high school.

We just had to be patient.