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,…
Tag: Piano Teachers
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…
Master Classes with Dame Imogen Cooper
It’s the start of a new academic year and as it’s been a while since I posted a master class, I thought the following might be just the ticket to inspire a fruitful term’s work. Filmed in the Performance Hall at the Royal College of Music in London on January 30th 2024, this class was…
Developing A Flexible Piano Technique: Hal Leonard Webinar
Piano technique can be problematic for many students. Questions surrounding this aspect of piano playing are more frequent than any other in my experience, and this is certainly true in my Adult Piano Returner Facebook group: if you have a Facebook account but have yet to discover this group which now has 31,000 members, click…
A Keynote Speech and an Asia-Pacific Adventure
On June 29th 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…
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…
Piano Pedagogy Spotlight: Interview Series with Jan Loeffler – Part 3
Today’s post features the third interview with Jan Loeffler who is a pianist and piano professor at Royal Birmingham Conservatoire (UK). In this instalment, Jan offers his thoughts on teaching technique, repertoire, and using the piano exam syllabus. At what approximate age and level do your students begin their musical journey with you? This varies…
Piano Pedagogy Spotlight: Interview Series with Jan Loeffler – Part 1
It gives me great pleasure to introduce a new series on my blog. Pianist and piano professor Jan Loeffler teaches the piano at the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire in the UK where he works in both junior and senior schools. A significant number of Jan’s pupils have won awards both domestically and abroad. He reflects on…
Teaching Observations: Piano Courses For Young Pianists
Over the past few years, several of my younger students have expressed a desire to participate in a summer course, and I’ve always been supportive of what I consider an extremely useful extracurricular activity. Those who have attended have invariably improved their playing, sometimes substantially. The opportunity to play regularly with new or different teachers…
Voicing: 5 Tips
This month’s 5 tips article for Pianist Magazine’s website focuses on voicing. This is a vital role in piano playing and will determine a pianist’s artistry and musical phrasing. I hope the following ideas are beneficial. Voicing, or the highlighting of various musical lines or strands of music, plays a crucial role in good piano…