Anyone who has followed Jenifer Cook’s The Church Pianist blog knows that she is a gifted pianist and teacher. Her ability to communicate improvisation and arranging techniques to aspiring pianists is unparalleled in my opinion! It’s one thing to be able to play and improvise well, but a whole different thing to be able to […]
Repertoire Suggestions
Monday Mailbag – Christmas Music for Students
??I was just looking into Christmas music for my new student and was curious as to what books you recommend? In my studio, the Christmas recital has traditionally been our big event of the year. So I am always on the lookout for great music for my students to play. At the end of October, […]
Favorite Rote Teaching Pieces
Do you ever teach pieces to your students by rote? I have a couple of students that absolutely amaze me with their ability to watch me play something once and then repeat it almost perfectly and retain it in their memory all week long! Here are a few pieces that I frequently use for this […]
Free Curriculum – Musical Travels for Children
I just downloaded a 161-page free curriculum called, “Musical Travels for Children“! The course was created by Catherine Schmidt Jones and includes units on Europe, Asia, Africa, Americas, and Australia. Each unit is comprised of practical teaching ideas, printed music from the various continents, and additional notes and resource links. This would be fabulous as […]
Review and Giveaway of Sonatinas and Little Sonatas CD!
Don’t you just love it when your students come into lessons saying, “I want to play this really cool piano piece by J.C. Bach that I heard over the weekend?” OK, really, when was the last time you heard such a comment? 🙂 It’s much more likely that they want to play the theme song […]
A Compendium of Composers
Yesterday, I shared a little bit about the Galaxy of Composers group class that we held in the studio last week. In preparation for this each student selected (or was given) a composition by a composer of interest to them. I tried to keep the duplicate composers to a minimum, but of course we did […]
