My guest writer this week is pianist, teacher and author Rami Bar-Niv. Rami has written many articles for this website and today’s focuses on interpretation. You can read more from Rami by clicking here. A good start is the balance between brain and heart, which is pretty good advice for life in general. Brain is…
Tag: Piano Lessons
Piano Pedagogy Spotlight: An Interview with Frank Huang – Part 2
I’m continuing my series of interviews focusing on piano pedagogy featuring professors and faculty members of universities and music conservatoires around the world. This week’s guest writer and interviewee is American concert pianist and associate professor Frank Huang who works at Miami University based in Ohio, USA. In part two of this series, Frank answers…
Performing for Fun: 5 Tips
This article was published last month on Pianist Magazine’s website. Why should we perform? Many of us merely want to play the piano in private just for fun and most crucially, to ourselves. So when someone suggests a possible performance, whether in a formal or informal setting, we can feel terrified. What if we make…
Piano Pedagogy Spotlight: An Interview Series with Frank Huang – Part 1
I’m continuing my series of interviews focusing on piano pedagogy featuring professors and faculty members of universities and music conservatoires around the world. My latest guest writer is Frank Huang who is an American concert pianist and Associate Professor at Miami University which is based in Ohio, USA. Over a series of four posts, Frank…
Music & Drama Education Expo 2025
I’m looking forward to the Music & Drama Education Expo in London next week. This two-day event is held every year and has been through several transformations since its inception twelve years ago. According to its website, the Expo consists of ‘a mix of practical workshops, CPD sessions, seminars and networking for music and drama…
Composer of the Month at TopMusic
2025 starts with a bang! During January, I’m ‘composer of the month’ at the TopMusic.co which is an educational organisation founded and run by Tim Topham, a music educator who I had the pleasure of meeting when I visited Australia last Summer. Earlier this week ten of my elementary piano pieces were published by TMS…
Festive Greetings 2024
As another year draws to a close, it can be helpful to spend some time reflecting. As usual, it’s been a busy year for me and I’ve had the wonderful opportunity to work with some fantastic contributors here on this blog and there’s lots more planned for 2025. I’d like to take this chance to…
Piano Pedagogy Series: A interview with James Kirby – Part 5
I’m so enjoying highlighting the exceptional work of many wonderfully dedicated friends and colleagues, and am looking forward to developing this pedagogy series over the coming year. Today’s post is the final instalment of my interview with concert pianist and piano professor James Kirby. In this article, James talks about his love of educational work,…
Teaching Observations: Fingering and Annotating Scores
Recently I’ve been working with a couple of students on a particular piece from my series Women Composers – A Graded Anthology For Piano. Both students, who are adults, are preparing it for a diploma exam. As this piece isn’t on the syllabus, it will form part of their ‘own choice’ exam repertoire, of which…
The Metronome: 5 Tips
Greetings from Melbourne, Australia, where I’m on a book tour. I’ve been intending to publish this post for a while; it’s a recent blog post written for Pianist Magazine’s website focusing on the use of the metronome. Over the years, I have found this device to be extremely helpful in my teaching class and I…
Beyond the Score – The case for reintegrating improvisation and composition into classical piano lessons: Garreth Brooke
Last weekend I published a post highlighting a useful new website called pianocreativity.com. In today’s post, Garreth Brooke, who runs this website, has written his own article introducing his new project and sheds light on the importance of incorporating such an approach for use in piano lessons. One of the curious paradoxes of being a…
A Journey Through Debussy’s Preludes 6: Julian Jacobson
Julian Jacobson’s final post in his Debussy series spotlights the last six preludes from Book 2 in preparation for his recital on June 6th 2024 at the 1901 Arts Club in London. Preludes Book 2 nos. 7-12 And so to the final six Preludes of Debussy’s magnum opus for piano. Having diverted us with a…