For the conclusion of our practice incentive theme, Beat the Pirates!, this year, I hosted a celebration party. All the students converged on our house for a couple of hours last night and we spent the time… …going through the line of pizza toppings… …meticulously selecting just the right toppings for each personal pan-sized pizza… […]
Recital Ideas
A Lovely Night
Due to a number of unexpected circumstances last year, I made the difficult decision not to host any kind of Christmas recital for my students (after 20 years of that annual tradition!). Instead, my husband suggested that we do something for Valentine’s Day. I decided to give his idea a try, and we had an […]
September Surprise Group Piano Class – by Candlelight!
The September Surprise! has become a much-anticipated tradition in our studio, but I think I can safely say that this year’s will go down in history as one of the most memorable. The students and their families arrived in the midst of an intense thunderstorm, and near the end of one of the performances a […]
AMT Inspiration – Create A Feeling
Several times this past year in both my teaching and my performing I have recalled a comment by Time for Three from their interview in the December/January issue of the American Music Teacher magazine. When discussing the variety of genre the group performs, Ranaan Meyer includes this in his response: “Ultimately the reason an audience […]
A Neighborhood Christmas Concert
We always love to try new ideas in our studio, and this year we thought it would be cool to expand our annual Christmas recital into a Neighborhood Christmas Concert as a way to get to know our neighbors better and share our musical selections with them. So we printed up invitations about a month […]
Just Make it Up
Sometimes when students are preparing for a performance I encourage them to “improvise” when they get stuck or have a memory lapse. Some students understand this, but for others who are younger or more concrete thinkers, I found a very simple phrase this week to help them keep going in a performance. Around 1:27 in […]
