I recently came across this delightful video clip of Alma Deutscher improvising at the piano on four notes randomly selected from a hat. It’s fascinating to watch, and her personality is endearing. I’m enjoying listening to selections from the album she released last fall, “From My Book of Melodies.” Definitely a rising musician to keep […]
Improvising
New Finds for Piano Lessons!
Is everyone busy gearing up for a new year of piano lessons? I am in brainstorming season right now as I develop lesson plans for each student, select repertoire that I hope they will love, and create a new practice incentive theme for the piano studio. There are a couple of fabulous new resources that […]
Group Piano Class Jam Session
One of my objectives with every group class (held monthly) is for students to not only perform for each other, but also to play music together. We accomplish this in various ways, but for our January group piano class, I thought it would be interesting to try having a jam session. This isn’t something we […]
Free Musical U Masterclass with Forrest Kinney this Saturday
Perhaps one of the most transformational moments of my music teaching career was attending a showcase by Forrest Kinney at the MTNA conference in 2010. It is not an exaggeration to say that my teaching has never been the same since! I began incorporating his ideas on improvisation into our lessons right away and was […]
A Very Out-of-the-Box Book for the Improv-Challenged Pianist
As I mentioned in my recent post about improvisation pianist Anna Ferraro, I spent years feeling stuck to the page in my piano playing. My early forays into improvisation felt very uncomfortable and unmusical. And frankly, I’m still not that great at it. It’s so easy to get stuck in a rut and not know […]
Increasing Inspiration in Your Studio, Part 2 – A Guest Post by Improv Pianist Anna Ferraro
Note from Natalie: Be sure to enter the drawing for your own copy of Anna’s newest album, “Where Glory Dwells.” And…we’re back! With part two in this mini-series. As I mentioned before, the motivation behind everything I do in my studio is to inspire my students to excellence. However, I find that it is not […]
