“Stay in Place” Online lessons, tutorials, and performances

We continue to lift our spirits in cyber, keeping our music exchanges alive and well under the veil of SIP. Ironically, in keeping with the times, many students have asked to study more somber works. Schumann's "First Sorrow, from the composer's Album for the Young, is a popular pick. Next is Chopin's mournful B minor…

Online lessons are coming into their own in the age of Corona virus

For years I felt like a duck out of water, barely floating outside the mainstream as an Online piano teacher. My isolation was intensified by boomer generation colleagues who insisted on face-to-face mentoring as the gold pedagogical standard. I could empathize before 2010, when I'd journeyed for years through traditional teaching circles without a second…

Navigating those skinny black keys without fear!

Looking back to my earliest piano lessons in an early 20th century townhouse attic space in the Bronx, off Kingsbridge Road, I recall my happiest moments floating through all white key melodies. It was a Diller-Quaile par duo journey with Mrs. Vinagradov, a very warm and encouraging Russian teacher, who sang line by line lyrics…

Time to size down to one grand piano!

With space shrinking in what I affectionately call my "pod," I'm parting with my nightingale singing Baldwin that's sister to a neighboring Steinway. Sitting pretty at 5'5," its voice swims around a room inundated with computers, an elliptical, a digital keyboard, and hoards of Urtext editions. The moment has arrived, therefore, to acquire well-needed breathing…

Picking a second Chopin Waltz for an Intermediate level student

Coming back to a composition that has personal practicing phases, combined with teaching experiences assists in choosing sequences of pieces for students. In the cosmos of Chopin Waltzes, I discern a consecutive study relationship between the A minor Waltz, No. 19, Op. Posthumous and the B minor Waltz, Op. 69, no. 2. The B minor…

Seymour Bernstein’s legendary Op. 111 (Beethoven)

In our 21st Century digital age of Mp4s, CD's, You Tube channeled uploads, and live-streamed recitals, it's a wonder that a performer can bridge the distance from his audience and move listeners to heights of emotional ecstasy. One such exemplary performance of Beethoven's Op. 111, delivered through a modest recorder placed beside Vladimir Horowitz's piano,…

A Successful Piano Finding Journey for an adult student (Video)

Two days of intensive piano evaluating produced a lovely outcome. It was a partnered teacher/pupil journey through aisles of Kawai, Yamaha, and Baldwin verticals, playing and replaying them-- comparing responses to voicing, tactile/touch tone, pedal/no pedal trials through lowest to highest octaves. Our duo team effort elicited a patient, interactive stream of responses: Teacher: "This…

Practicing Contrary Motion Scales (Video tutorial)

I often use scales played in opposite directions to reinforce posture and the body's ability to lean in either direction toward the highest or lowest octave without bench wandering, or dizzying head movements. Since the third octave in these excursions is not within eye range, the advantage of a pull toward the keyboard, (even without…

Beauty in Simplicity: Robert Schumann’s “Melody” No. 1

Schumann's Album for the Young opens with an ethereal duet that meanders through heart-rending harmonies by its seamless flow of broken intervals and chords in the lower line. (The bass is intentionally composed in an alto range, and read in the left hand with a second treble clef, bringing the duet to poignance by its…

Repeated groups of notes, metrical framing, and phrase contouring

With one big eyeful of Friedrich Burgmuller's "La Candeur" (Frankness), one observes repetitious strands of melody that can be stultified by a rigid 4/4 framing. The erroneous "study" or etude effect, furthered by a beat-hammering mentor, can thrust a struggling player into an inescapable auto-pilot zone Yet, the opening measures, with twin note groupings, can…