On June 29^th I embarked on my largest and certainly longest book tour to date. This one had taken considerable preparation and financial support from both Schott Music and Hal Leonard Australia. These trips are usually fun, inspiring, fascinating and educational, and this Australasian extravaganza was nothing short of amazing.

The tour started in Singapore in order to break the immense journey to Australia. I’ve flown down-under several times before and am only too well aware of the detrimental effects of jet-lag. However, on arrival in Singapore, one is propelled into a balmy, hot climate and because I love the heat, I immediately felt relaxed, rejuvenated, and ready for action.  

The Virtuo Piano Studio is a small independent piano school based in River Valley Road owned by piano teacher Charles Wu. My first workshop presentation was to be a ‘warm-up’ for my keynote speech at the Australasian Piano Pedagogy Conference later in the tour. I’m all for ‘warm-ups’ and ‘run-throughs’, and having encouraged my young students to prepare vigorously for their end of year exams, I felt the need to practice what I preach. The programme, which focused on my series featuring women composers – Women Composers – A Graded Anthology For Piano (Schott) – consisted of a 75-minute romp through all three books, with a substantial introduction which highlights the series’ beginnings as well as my research and thought process behind the books. The presentation was entitled Diversity in Repertoire, and I played and demonstrated 23 pieces and spoke about all 52 works to give teachers a ‘flavour’ of the different composers, styles, and genres within the volumes.

A small group of teachers attended this first event and they commented on how they loved hearing the breadth of music on offer throughout the series. Now that pieces are starting to feature in various exam syllabuses, teachers were keen to get their hands on copies. Afterwards we feasted at a delightful Indian-Singaporean restaurant, and I gave several private lessons for teachers and students over the coming days.

After catching-up with my Singaporean friends and colleagues, I flew on to Perth for the first leg of this Australian adventure. My flight landed at the unearthly hour of 1.00am where I was met by my assistant for the next twelve days in Australia, Matthew Nutley. Matt works for Hal Leonard Australia and he is also a musical theatre director for musical theatre shows where he lives in Melbourne. Without him this tour would have been impossible; he drove us to each venue, booked and drove to the hotels, restaurants, practice sessions, and also ran my power-point sessions during the workshops and presentations as well. Matt was responsible for delivery of the books and for book sales at these events, too – and he gave his own presentations at the end of most of my sessions, enthusiastically introducing teachers to all the latest Hal Leonard publications.

We were able to briefly relax for a day in Perth before my presentation. I had time to explore the city and meet my cousin Graham and his partner Zoe for lunch, who both came to the Perth presentation, which was held at Zenith Music, a charming old-fashioned music store just outside the city centre. Zenith is literally packed with sheet music – I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many scores in one place. A small but keen group of teachers attended this event which featured the women composers anthology – Diversity in Repertoire – and was my second ‘run-through’!

After the morning presentation, Matt and I flew straight to Melbourne for the ‘main event’ of the tour which was the Australasian Piano Pedagogy Conference (APPC), held at Monash University which is situated in Clayton, a south-eastern suburb of Melbourne. It was nice to have a couple of days to acclimatise before we started work. Here, I met three other Hal Leonard presenters with whom I would be working for this conference:  Samantha Coates, author of the well-known and extremely popular theory book series, BlitzBooks, Carly McDonald, author and the Faber Piano Adventures Australia representative, and Angela Turner, piano syllabus selector for the AMEB examination board and author and editor of the new Hal Leonard Exploring Piano Grades series.

What an honour it was to be working alongside such illustrious colleagues, and, as the ‘Hal Leonard presenters team’, we stayed in the same accommodation and ate together most evenings. Before the start of the conference, I spent a day with Carly in Melbourne visiting the National Gallery of Victoria, enjoying the atmosphere and vibe of this vibrant city.  

The APPC conference, entitled ‘Beyond The Notes’, began on Monday 8^th July and lasted five days in total. Monash university campus is large, spacious, and modern, and it was necessary to walk between venues, for which I was grateful – exercise was much needed after all the excellent food I ate! Lunch was provided every day on campus, and aside from being delicious and catering to many different tastes and dietary requirements, it was the ideal opportunity to catch-up with colleagues and make new acquaintances. Alongside the dining area was the ‘shop’ where book stores and publishers set up to sell their books. Mine were on sale in most of the shops, however, Pats Music Store, who were collaborating with Hal Leonard at the APPC, offered a splendidly impressive display of my books, which helped sales considerably.

The conference opened with a recital given by Australian pianist Piers Lane followed by a welcome cocktail party. Piers offered an eclectic programme of Mozart (Sonata in F major K 332), Chopin (Fantasy in F minor Op. 49), and Messiaen (the complete Préludes pour piano), and it was great to catch-up with him at the party afterwards; I hadn’t seen him since our Classical Conversations interview in 2013.

On the second day the conference began in earnest. There were so many interesting presentations, lectures, lecture-recitals, workshops, and masterclasses on offer, but sadly I was unable to attend many as I was preparing for my three presentations. The first took place on Tuesday late afternoon in the Performance Theatre, which was a fairly large concert space and I was delighted that it was a full house for this first workshop, which focused on piano technique. Lasting around 45 minutes, afterwards I was able to chat to delegates, most of whom returned to my next workshop the following afternoon. This second technique workshop was held in the larger auditorium and, again it was nice to be able to speak to audience members afterwards.

During the first two days of the APPC, I attended Angela Turner’s presentation for her new series, Exploring Grade 3. Published by Hal Leonard, this series runs alongside the AMEB piano exam syllabus. Angela played many of the pieces and spoke about her research for this volume, which was, by all accounts, mammoth and a serious amount of work. ‘Exploring Piano Grades’ is an excellent series and highly recommended. The third day ended with a conference dinner held at a local hotel, providing a chance to meet the APPC organisers, sponsors, and fellow presenters.

On Thursday, the fourth day of the conference, I had a day-off and was able to enjoy my other Hal Leonard colleagues’ events in between running to the practice rooms to prepare for my final presentation. Carly McDonald presented a session on the Faber Piano Adventures method books informing teachers about series updates, and then she gave a compelling talk about teaching students with ADHD, with which she herself has been diagnosed; I knew little about this condition and found the talk very informative. Samantha Coates gave a beneficial workshop about piano pedalling, and later in the day offered her famous ‘Pizza, Pinot, and Pedagogy’ session for teachers. A glass of wine (Pinot) was handed to all teachers at the beginning of the session, followed by a talk, The Role of Parents in a Successful Practice Routine (Pedagogy), and the evening was rounded-off with copious amounts of food (Pizza). Samantha hosts these events at her home in Sydney and, by all accounts, has a full house on every occasion.

My keynote address speech was at 9.00am on the final day of the conference (Friday). The large auditorium was packed with over 230 teachers as I gave my Diversity in Repertoire lecture-recital, and I certainly appreciated the two beautiful Shigeru Kawai instruments at my disposal. The presentation went well and was followed by my last conference event, a panel discussion. Moderated by Carly, Samantha, Angela, and I enjoyed answering the audience’s varied questions.

Lunchtime was spent meeting teachers and signing many copies of my books! The conference finished on Friday afternoon, but, by this time, Matt and I were already on our way to the airport and the next stop on the tour, Adelaide. We spent the shortest amount of time in Adelaide of all the cities on this trip, arriving quite late into the evening, our presentation took place at 10.00am the next morning at the Australian Piano Warehouse – a nice venue complete with a good Yamaha instrument. My piano technique workshop lasted around 90 minutes, and it was great to be able to work with teachers at the piano, which was something I couldn’t do at the conference due to time constraints and larger audience numbers. Carly, who lives in Adelaide, also presented her Piano Adventures workshop to our group of keen teachers.

Once again, we zipped off to the airport and flew to our next port of call, Sydney. I had previously been to Sydney about four or five times before for my work. On our day-off, Matt and I decided to walk from our hotel to the famous water front with the harbour bridge and iconic opera house, and by the time we had done this, via a few detours, and then walked back to the hotel later in the day, we had covered about 8.5 miles on foot! An opera house tour and performance at the Dame Joan Sutherland Theatre was a lovely way to spend a Sunday.

The next workshop took place in a Sydney Suburb, which involved crossing the famous bridge – a very pleasant start to a Monday morning. Sydney String Centre was the venue at which I offered my piano technique presentation, and, again, was able to work with teachers at the piano, which is always helpful. In the afternoon we flew to the final stop on the Australian leg of this tour, Brisbane.

I had never been to Brisbane before and it was my favourite Australian city of the tour. Brisbane is modern, spacious, and enchanting. Our workshop took place at the Queensland Music Teachers’ Association headquarters and was mainly attended by teachers within the association – and how wonderful that they have their own venue. It was well-attended and I met many teachers, as well as a few members of my thriving Facebook group – Adult Piano Returners – who had come especially to meet me.  

We spent the afternoon in Brisbane, soaking up the atmosphere and I was pleased to drive around a little and visit the Queensland Conservatorium of Music; I enjoy visiting music institutes on my travels. I then said ‘goodbye’ to Matt and boarded my overnight flight to Hong Kong, the last destination on the trip.   

It began with private teaching. In Hong Kong I usually work at the Tom Lee Academy of Music and their main offices are situated in Kowloon. I’m on their staff as a visiting teacher, so I generally give private lessons to advanced students, and my first day was spent doing just that. This was followed by three days of intense adjudicating at their competition, the Tom Lee Youth Culture Music Competition. It was a treat to work with two adjudicators: composer and piano teacher Dan Lee and Kinwai Syum, a piano professor at the Academy of Performing Arts in Hong Kong.

I spent a further day teaching and then gave the final workshop of the trip, which took place on the penultimate day at Tom Lee’s beautiful Silvercord Tower venue. I gave my Diversity in Repertoire presentation and teachers were interested to hear about women composers, although in this part of the world female composers still tend to be viewed as a bit of a novelty.

My trip lasted nearly a month and I feel very privileged to have undertaken such a tour. I took eight flights in total (including three long overnighters), stayed in six hotels and one apart-hotel, and gave ten presentations: one keynote speech, three lecture-recital presentations and six workshops. A huge ‘thank you’ must go to the whole team at Hal Leonard Australia, and to my wonderful team at Schott Music, and also to Charles Wu at Virtuo Music Studio, and Helen Chen and Charite Wong at the Tom Lee Music Academy, for enabling this trip and for their unwavering support of my work.

I’m already looking forward to next time…

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