If you fancy a relaxing weekend in the most beautiful English country setting, with scrumptious home cooked food, you will love the courses held at Jackdaws Music Educational Trust. There is plenty of opportunity to hone your piano skills whilst meeting new like-minded friends. Situated in Somerset, near Frome, this music course venue is exceptional. Its courses are becoming more popular every year.
This is the third year I have run a weekend course at Jackdaws, and I’m always delighted to be working amongst such an illustrious cohort of course tutors. This year, I’ll be focusing on piano technique. After running my course Piano Technique, Sight-reading and Memorisation for the past two years, I realised, from those who came (and some comments from those who didn’t), just how crucial my work teaching piano technique really is. Throughout this weekend, I hope to illustrate the possibility of improving your skills irrespective of age or ability.
Students often complain of tension, pain, and discomfort when they play, which probably stems from moving around the instrument in a less than ideal manner, resulting in many technical issues.
During the course, I’ll consider the reasons for tension and examine useful ways of alleviating it, by focusing on establishing freedom and relaxation whilst playing.
Each course member will be given ample opportunity to hone and improve their technique. Working at rotational wrist motion, strengthening fingers, and developing completely free arm movement; encouraging the use of arm weight, with the aim of producing a warm, pleasing tone. Scales, arpeggios, chords, octaves, double note passages and much more, will be evaluated and discussed. We will also work on aspects within each student’s chosen repertoire.
Participants are advised to bring two or three contrasting pieces to the workshops, although these do not have to be performance ready.
