Piano Technique: Executing Tremolos as occur in Beethoven’s Sonata “Pathetique”

I've picked up various ideas about practicing tremolos from the piano forums as applies to the Alla Breve section of the "Pathetique" Sonata No. 8 (movement 1) and extracted a valuable tutorial from a colleague who posted it to you tube. At first I concurred with pianist/teacher Benjamin Steinhardt that rolling the C broken octave…

Seymour Bernstein: From Maine with Love

When Seymour packs his bags for the summer, escaping Manhattan's stifling heat, he takes along his soulful music and fistfuls of almonds. The maestro, known for his beloved book, With Your Own Two Hands retreats to an awesome, cabin-like sanctuary that sits on a cliff overlooking the ocean. (It's his daily source of inspiration.) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EeQ2tJ90OMs…

A Blissful Hauskonzert through a Meet-up Connection

Well, it finally came to pass, and technology reigned, bridging the distance between player and audience. I was naturally present in body and spirit, but my face with its register of emotions was plainly blocked by my piano rack. About 12 hours before the event, I had posted a video revealing the seating arrangement. It…

“Clouds,” “cushions,” and “veils” permeate a Chopin Lesson (Waltz in A minor)

Floating arms, supple wrists, delicate relaxed ornaments and trills, and an oxymoron-driven, perfect parachute landing flowed into a lesson last night with a musically responsive adult student. The keyboard was transformed into a soft cushion receiving fingers energized with bigger channeled energies traveling down buoyant arms through springy wrists. Most of all, imagination fed a…

Piano Instruction: Piecing out and Practicing J.S. Bach Little Prelude in F, BWV 927

One of my colleagues who filmed a tutorial on this gem, called it a "BEGINNER" composition, yet, in truth, it's not in the easy column. It demands a fluent technique and a thoughtful approach to learning that includes harmonic analysis, blocking, understanding counterpoint, making sensible decisions about articulation, and shaping phrases. Therefore, this "LITTLE" Prelude…

An Adult Piano Student and Stained Glass Artist has a dual passion

It's a small world in many ways. Julie Orchard became a piano student of mine through my next door neighbor, Art, who happens to own the Bottle Shop across the street. But degrees of separation melted further when I discovered that Julie's mother studied piano in Fresno with my former teacher, Ena Bronstein. In fact,…

Physical fitness and piano playing

For the past few years, I've adhered to a fitness program that includes daily exercising at the Y gym. I don't use weights because of their stress on my wrists, but I find the Gravitron (demonstrated in part one of my video) to be an upper body strength-builder. Particularly when I need added dead weight…

Happy Birthday, Irina Morozova!

When I first discovered Irina's collection of performances on You Tube, I surely thought heaven had descended to earth. She produced an ethereal singing tone inspired by imagination, but fine tuned with technical fluidity. Without a doubt, her repository of musical insights expanded my own piano learning journey as well as those of her students…

Art Kinsey, my piano-loving neighbor, celebrates a special business anniversary

Musicians are often plagued by their living arrangement, particularly when they move from a sprawling private home to a pea size apartment. In my case, relocating to Berkeley, California from the steaming hot Central Valley where I occupied a two-story house, brought an impending dread of living beside a neighbor who would complain constantly about…

Piano Instruction: C Major Scale Mapping

Most students think of C Major as the easiest scale around the BLOCK. But in fact, it's not nearly as patterned or symmetrical as the double and triple black note content scales, B, F# and C# Major (Or their equivalent in FLATS, Db, Gb and Cb) With the ebony laden ones, you can easily place…