Lang Lang

I like living near a big city. Big cities have lots of events and things to do. They have world class orchestras with renown classical visiting artists. It means I finally got to see the superstar Lang Lang in person. I'm a big fan of Lang Lang. I love his biographical story where he grew up with parents who were both incredibly demanding and supportive that he play the piano, the trauma when his teacher "expelled him for lack of talent" from the conservatory, and especially because he became a piano phenomenon by overcoming immense obstacles through hard work and perseverance. Lang Lang has done more than any artist I can think of to promote classical music and the piano. He sponsors piano schools all over the world, gives master classes, has his Lang Lang foundation, features in multiple TV documentaries, gives many performances with all kinds of organizations, has lots of YouTube videos, etc. etc. He has crossover appeal and I love that he is making classical music more popular in this world.
Lang Lang has always had critics and detractors. I firmly fall on the side of thinking his contributions are positive. In my view, he is making classical music more popular. He appeals to a younger audience with his flamboyance and does lots of musical crossovers with pop and rock stars. I think that is a good thing. What's even better is that he is not all flash and lack of substance. When I was studying a Liszt romance, his recording on the "LISZT My Piano Hero" (Track 1) album was my favorite recording. He has technical chops and a wonderful understanding of music. I really enjoy watching his masterclasses (through YouTube ) and always learn a lot. He also talks a lot about hard work and practice and helps the public realize that the wizardry audiences see at the piano is due to an enormous amount of hard work. One my favorite quotes from him is: "All my colleagues in classical music have worked this hard, but nobody knows just how hard."
So, I was very excited when I found Lang Lang was coming to play with the Seattle Symphony. I was finally going to see Lang Lang play in person. I did some research about his performance and found that he was coming back after a significant injury. The New York times did not one, but two articles about his comeback. The articles mentioned that his style had changed after the injury, becoming more mature and less showy. Lang Lang played Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 2 with the Seattle Symphony. I loved his confidence while he played and his total control of his performance. He seemed like he could do whatever he wanted at the piano. That was amazing to see. He didn't perform with many histrionics, but he did have more gestures at the piano (which sometimes did detract from the music), than typical for a pianist. However, I loved finally being able to see Lang Lang in person and also loved his technically brilliant encore (Mendelssohn's Spinning Song) which he played with ease. I hope Lang Lang continues his dazzling career for as long as possible.

Piano Shoes for pedaling

A while back, I was practicing the piano a lot without shoes on and gradually developed a foot injury. It felt like the pedal was pressing up on my foot and over time that area started to hurt, especially around the ball of my foot. After this injury, I started thinking about what type of pedaling shoes would be best. Many people recommend leather shoes for pedalling, so you can have some sensation of the pedal through the shoe while still protecting the foot from injury or nerve damage. That seems like a good idea to me, it is always helpful to be able to feel the pedal movement through your foot. However, I have now adjusted that thinking to want both a leather sole and some sort of solid heel while practicing with the pedal.

I know that having my heel off the floor a bit feels better, but I'm not sure exactly why it this is true. I know that when I use the accelerator pedal in a car, it has a slanted foot board so that your foot is in a more relaxed position when resting and then the foot presses down from the rest position. So, I assume it is because I like having my foot in a better rest position from which I can exert downward force (plantar flexion). The mazda.com website explains the foot position this way:

"... the basic need to keep one’s heel on the floor in order to maintain leg position comfortably over a long period. In operating the accelerator, the ankle becomes a fulcrum around which the foot pivots downwards."

In the wonderful book, "What Every Pianist Needs To Know About The Body" by Thomas Mark, he explains that the ankle moves a lot like a "lopsided upside down letter T" because the movement of the foot does not occur at the back of the heel, but at the ankle joint which is in front of the heel bone. So, I guess I like having my foot at less of an upward angle when at rest because pianists keep their heels on the floor for balance. With a bit of a heel, my foot is more parallel to the floor (especially if the piano has wheels under the legs) and it feels better to me.
I have also chosen a rather solid heel for my pedalling shoes. I don't want to have too narrow a heel where I am wobbling on the heel and lack good balance. I have read on the pianoworld forum that some people are recommend a book or block under the heel, but it seems to me that finding the right shoe is a better long term solution to this problem.

Classical Music Streaming Services

Music streaming services have been inevitably creeping up on me. In the past, I used Itunes for many many years and it served me very well. I like the idea of owning music that no one can take away from me. I chose my music carefully, because I was choosing each piece for a price. Consequently, I have a lot of music that I have collected over many years in my Itunes library including many classical music performances that are my favorites. A small number of years ago, I started listening to Pandora with ads during workouts, while working in the kitchen making dinner, or driving in the car. I didn't mind the ads too much, it reminded me of old-time radio when you listened to free music with lots of ads. Pandora didn't have as many ads as old-time radio, so it seemed better to me. Obviously, I like free, so that's how I initially used music streaming services. I enjoyed choosing a music genre to listen to the new stuff. I thought of it as free music genre radio.

My family chose Spotify for me. My daughters used Spotify and my husband hated listening to the ads on Pandora. So, we got a family Spotify plan and now we all listen to Spotify as our music streaming service. My daughters have quite a few playlists on Spotify that they don't want to give up, so its hard for them to change music streaming apps. Spotify seems fine, it is nice to listen to music without ads, but there is a price and even with a family plan discount, it ratchets up our family budget. In the meantime, I still listen to some of my own music through Itunes (glad that still works on my phone, at least for now).

As a piano teacher, I love classical music (as well as many other styles of music), so I was very interested to read about the new classical music streaming services like Primephonic and Idagio in the New York Times. It seems like such a "cool" idea. As a listener, I personally notice a big difference between individual artist and orchestral performances. Some performances just seem better to me.  Also, when I start a new piano piece, I love to search out a number of different artist recordings of the same piece. I often find substantial differences in interpretation that help me understand how I want my version of the piece to sound. It would be very nice to be able to find all those versions in one classical music app and be able to call them up whenever I need them instead of buying ad-hoc versions on Amazon and Itunes or sifting through versions on YouTube.
Unfortunately, I really don't want to pay for yet another streaming service with monthly fees. I love the idea, but its just not quite practicable for me. I wish Idagio or Primephonic would offer a free version with ads, but they don't. So, even though I love the idea of a streaming classical music app, its not for me right now. I'm actually kind of hoping that Spotify will just improve its service so that this type of classical music choice is available within its platform, but that doesn't look imminent. So, I'm just going to go on my merry way for the moment with Spotify and ad-hoc classical music recordings. C'est La Vie.

The Music Teacher's National Association Conference in Spokane

The Music Teacher's National Association Conference was held in Spokane, Washington March 16-20, 2019. I was excited that this conference was so close to my home, that I knew people from my local association that were attending, and I was anticipating great presentations about all aspects of piano/music teaching and performing. The good news is that this conference definitely exceeded my expectations in terms of the wealth and variety of content. It was difficult to choose which presentations to attend and my head felt like it wanted to explode at the end of every day with all kinds of new ideas about piano literature, pedagogy, and performance. I thought I would list a few of my very favorite sessions that I attended at the conference and why I liked them the best.

PEDAGOGY SATURDAY FAVORITE PRESENTATION - Brian And Bernardo: Improv And Creativity from the Recreational Music Making Track
It has been a goal of mine for a few years now to personally learn how to improvise better. I have been taking some online courses in improvisation recently, but most of them emphasize playing chord progressions from the very beginning. After a while of playing chords, it seemed like I was getting a bit stuck. Of course playing chord progressions and understanding underlying harmonies is important, but the enthusiastic and engaging Brian Chung took a bit of a different approach in his presentation. In his book and at the conference, Brian starts improvising using one note in the Right Hand (RH) with the clever name of "Ode to Mr. Morse", while the left hand keeps a steady beat of one note. He then adds notes gradually to his improvisations using upper and lower neighbors, the three note waltz, the six note sojourn, etc. It was a wonderfully different way to approach improvisation and I wound up buying his book (after the conference because it was sold out by the time I got to the Alfred booth) and have started using some of his ideas immediately. I am using his idea of playing the tonic in the Left Hand (LH) with a steady beat of quarter notes in 4/4 or 3/4 and then have the (RH) improvise using the scale while keeping the scale fingering pattern intact. Of course, then you need to reverse the hands so the RH is playing the quarter notes and the LH is improvising on the scale using the correct fingering pattern. It is a wonderfully different way to practice scales, improvise, and have a lot of fun, you could even put a backing track on for a metronome.

SUNDAY FAVORITE PRESENTATION - Practicing Like A Pro by Dr. Robert Henry
This particular presentation was absolutely jam packed with people. Dr. Henry had not been given a large enough presentation room at the conference, so the audience was sitting in the chairs, sitting on the floor, standing at the back, and maybe into the hall. I'm not sure that his presentation was overly full because Randall Faber's presentation (scheduled for the same time slot) got cancelled, but I was glad I got there early and had a good seat. I think the reason I liked his presentation so much was not because it had earth-shattering new ways to practice, but more because it was such a logical, informative presentation on how to practice well. He had a lot of good advice along with well-constructed graphical presentations on how time should be spent while practicing. Some of my favorite bits from his presentation include:
* You must have a strong work ethic and commitment
* There is no room for self-indulgence or impulsiveness. You grow with resistance and doing what is hard or what you hate.
* You need a positive belief in yourself and an ability to learn quickly.
* Identify your own BS
* Repetition is the mother of all learning. We are what we practice.
* You need to break your piece into manageable practice chunks that don't last longer than 10 minutes and then do spaced repetition. (He had great graphics and a very complete explanation about how we learn)
* Dumb the piece down until you can play it well at speed from the beginning
* Knowing your key, harmony, and chords can help you learn a piece more quickly
* Practice in a way that flows like oil. (paraphrasing Mozart)
* Practice from memory starting from day one when learning a piece
* Focus on the process not the result
* Write stuff down, especially what made your practicing work

MONDAY FAVORITE PRESENTATION - Five Things Every Piano Teacher Should Know About Jazz (but probably doesn't) by Jeremy Siskind
Choosing a favorite presentation for Monday was a very close call. I attended a session by one of my favorite Aussie music teachers of all time, Samantha Coates. She had a fabulous and very funny presentation about the seven deadly performance sins. However, I think I learned a bit more from Jeremy's presentation because I'm not so knowledgeable about jazz playing and traditions. I especially liked that he uploaded his presentation to his website. Here's the link. He told us that when he adjudicates students at festivals and competitions, he often wishes that classically trained piano teachers knew a bit more about jazz and he hoped his presentation would help teachers understand jazz traditions more. I really liked his "jazz syllables" that he used to help sing typical jazz rhythms like "doo -dit" and "doo -vah" because as he pointed out, jazz is an aural art form. I also liked that he talked about chord voicings in jazz, because I have always found it a bit confusing. I'm going to have a closer look at his presentation and try the chord voicings at home to better my understanding. It was also very impressive that when none of his audio examples in his presentation worked - he just demonstrated his point ad hoc at the piano - that was fun and impressive to hear. Anyway, the five main points from his presentation were as follows:
1) Swing is really about articulation, not rhythm.
2) Chord Symbols give information, not instructions.
3) You can’t learn jazz like you learn classical music.
4) “Comping” isn’t random…it just sounds that way.
5) Learning to Improvise ≠ Learning Scales

TUESDAY FAVORITE PRESENTATION - Historical Improvisation And “Standard Repertoire” As Equal Partners In Concert by John Mortensen
You always hear that Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, Clementi, etc. were great improvisors, but its always been a bit of a mystery to me whether they discovered improvisation on their own or had some sort of method to their approach. John Mortensen (who also has a lot of YouTube videos available on different piano pedagogy topics) has an upcoming book from Oxford Press entitled, "The Pianist’s Guide to Classical Improvisation". His presentation was very well attended and he was mobbed afterward by college age students attending the conference eager to ask him questions about his classical improvisations. John opened his presentation with an impressive classical improvisation which made you wonder what the great composers would have made of his performance. John backed up his performance with some great explanations of how musicians of baroque and classical eras would have learned to improvise. According to John, its not a matter of genius, but merely a matter of pedagogy. He proceeded to explain the rule of the octave, which is a system for harmonizing a moving, stepwise bass line. In its simplest form, the rule is a set of inversions that work over a scale in the bass. He also explained that most musicians of the time were working musicians, not academics, so a lot of this method was not written down, but merely taught through rote learning and practice. It was a fascinating session and I look forward to his book being published. His website has a lot of online resources and is definitely worth checking out.

WEDNESDAY FAVORITE PRESENTATION - Building A Bridge: Curriculum Development For The Emerging Intermediate Student by Kathryn Sherman, NCTM
I've been slowly moving away from method books as the foundation of my teaching and this presentation provided additional insight into gradually moving students away from method books. Dr. Sherman talked about a four stage transition process:
1. Baby Milk Stage - Method book only
2. Supplemental Stage - Method book + L1 Repertoire
3. Complementary Stage - Method book + L2 Repertoire
4. Elemental Stage - Method book + L3 Repertoire
Dr. Sherman used a lot of Gurlitt in her examples of beginning repertoire because there are many short pieces available that contain good pedagogical topics. I have played some Gurlitt repertoire previously and knew he wrote a lot of teaching pieces, but I was unaware that he had so many short beginner level pieces that could be used as supplemental repertoire. I also thought it interesting that Dr. Sherman taught that you first depress a key using a foundational gesture, that is a "rocking" motion - down and in. This is interesting to me because it means that from the very beginning you are teaching horizontal movement into the keyboard as well as a forward wrist motion. This leads naturally to a two note slur and other keyboard motions.

I thoroughly enjoyed the conference and hope to attend more occasionally in the future. Here is a photo of my room-mates and myself at the conference prior to the evening performance by Ingrid Fliter.

Prepare your preschoolers for music lessons

Every piano teacher gets asked, "When should my child start piano lessons?" Of course that depends a lot on the child, maybe your child exhibits a profound early interest in music, or maybe you are a "Tiger Mom" and need your child to start music lessons earlier than most. I'm not a preschool specialist, so my personal answer to the question has always been that I prefer to accept new students as "average age beginners" or older. An average age beginner is generally considered to be 6-7 years of age. Part of my piano lessons involves learning to read music and the ability to sit on a piano bench for at least part of the lesson, so an average age beginner seems right for my style of teaching.
However, there's lots parents can do at home with their preschoolers to help promote musicality and a love of music:
1. LISTEN AND EXPOSE YOUR CHILD TO VARIOUS TYPES OF MUSIC - Try to expose your child to a variety of musical styles through listening together. Exposing your child to a wide variety of types of music lets them know that there isn't just one "right" way to make music. Classical music has a tremendous range of styles including some really interesting modern classical music, like Steve Reich's Music for 18 Musicians or Morten Lauridsen's Lux Aeterna Choral piece. However, also be sure to listen to jazz, rags, and blues which can introduce your child to improvised music that is composed on the spot. Then, of course, listen to your own personal favorite pop, rock, rap, etc.
2. SING WITH YOUR CHILD - You don't have to be a great singer or even in tune all the time to sing with your child. Children's songs are easy to learn and singing with your child helps them with all kinds of skills like audio awareness, rhythm, and pitch recognition. In piano lessons, it can be very helpful to sing melodic lines or use words as a way to learn rhythms. If a child comes to me for lessons and has been singing at home with their family, its a big plus. The student is more likely to sing for me at lessons if they have been singing at home. Here's some more reasons to sing with your child from GoodDaysWithKids.com. I would also urge parents to use call and response songs like "Down By The Bay" and encourage your child to make up their own rhyme as part of the song. That way your child can feel like they are helping to create music.
3. ENCOURAGE YOUR CHILD TO DANCE - Dancing with music is a great way to develop a good sense of rhythm and ability to listen. You can use children's action songs like "The Bunny Hop", or just dance around the kitchen to your current favorite song while encouraging your child to dance with you. Dancing with your child creates great musical related memories and encourages them to regard music as something dynamic, not just a passive listening experience. Many of our great classical compositions that piano students learn today were originally written as dances, like the minuet, allemande, and the tango.
4. HAVE YOUR CHILD PLAY ALONG WITH MUSIC: There's nothing like getting the ol' pots and pans out and have your child drum along with the music. Playing along with music will help your child develop a sense of rhythm and ability to listen just like dancing, but now your child is helping to create the music by playing along. Of course, you don't have to use pots and pans, you could have some maracas or even a small drum or tambourine.
5. GO TO A CHILD FRIENDLY MUSICAL PERFORMANCE:  There's a lot of really great children's musical theatre out there, but there's other options as well. You could go to a concert in your local park or attend a symphony performance that caters to children. Going to live musical performances is a gift that you give your child. It helps them realize how music is made and shows them that listening and appreciating live music is important. Then when your child starts to learn music and has their own live performance, they will have a better understanding of how live performances work and the etiquette of listening and clapping.

The Seattle Early Keyboard Museum

Belonging to the Edmonds Music Teacher's Association allows me to find out about many fascinating local musical events and opportunities. One of the more unusual opportunities that recently presented itself was a chance to visit The Seattle Early Keyboard Museum with my student.

The Seattle Early Keyboard Museum is currently located in the quiet and unassuming home of George Bozarth and Tamara Friedman, just north of Ballard. George is a music history professor at the University of Washington and an internationally renown Brahms scholar with many well-respected articles to his credit. (He just completed editing a new Henle edition of Brahms complete organ works.) His partner,  Tamara is a professional concert pianist specializing in performing on early keyboards. Their home and museum houses nearly two dozen original and replica historical instruments – a virginal, a harpsichord, a Lautenwerck, two clavichords, and fortepianos (1780—1869), both square and grand. The lineage of Viennese fortepianos is well represented, with instruments for each decade, 1780–1830, and contrasted with three original English pianos by Broadwood (1805, 1820) and Clementi (1810). Other makers represented include Erard, Kirkman, and Chickering, all three of their grand pianos from the 1860s.

I attended the museum with one of my adult students along with another teacher and her younger students. After getting our nametags and making a small donation to the museum, we went downstairs to where all the fabulous early pianos were located "cheek by jowl" in the lower level of their home. Tamara demonstrated almost all of the instruments with works appropriate to their individual tonalities and George regaled us with stories of the instruments along with other interesting anecdotes.

We had been asked to bring some appropriate baroque and/or classical pieces and after the pianos were demonstrated to us, everyone was given a chance to play on the pianos. It was a marvellous and absolutely unique opportunity to play on period instruments. I was astonished by the tone quality and variety of the various instruments. George and Tamara were very respectful of our students and made everyone give performers their full attention as an audience while people tried the different instruments.

One of the most surprising instruments was the Lautenwerck (also known as a Lute Harpsichord). This photo shows Tamara playing the Lautenwerck. This instrument was a favorite of J.S. Bach and in its original form the strings were made of gut. Their replica instrument used some sort of plastic or nylon strings and had a really interesting resonant quality.There were a number of levers that could be moved to change the tone quality. I tried out my Bach later on the Lautenwerck and found it to be a bit too resonant for my liking. The keys were also exceptionally "springy" which was an interesting sensation. However, the Laurenwerck was one of my favorite pianos because of its unusual tone quality.

Being a Mozart lover, I was excited to try their replica of "Mozart's piano" known in this museum as an Anton Walter Grand Fortepiano (Vienna, 1795; built by Rodney Regier, Freeport, ME). I found the piano very difficult to play for the uninitiated like myself. The key depth was quite shallow and the keys had a very light action. I found it quite difficult to achieve dynamic differences. The loudest dynamic was about a soft "mf" and then you had to play "featherlight" to get a softer dynamic. The sound was very clean and crisp and had that "antique piano" quality. The strings on this piano don't cross-over like on modern pianos, so there isn't much sympathetic vibration which gives it  an exceptional crispness of sound. There was the knee pedal, that was a little weird to try and coordinate. I had always envisioned a knee pedal being on the side of the leg of the piano (I'm not sure why), but this knee pedal was on the bottom of the keyboard for the left knee. However, the hardest part for me of attempting to play this piano was that the keys were reverse coloring. I had my music on the stand and then whenever I sneeked a peak at the keyboard to get my fingers on the right keys, I couldn't figure out which key was what. I realized that on a modern keyboard where most of the keys are white, there are dark lines between the keys which help you tell them apart. On "Mozart's piano",   the keys were a jumble of black, so it took my eyes a bit to figure out where my target key was located. So, my attempt to play my music failed pretty spectacularly, but it was so much fun trying to perform. If I had more time, I would have loved to try their square piano, which had a beautiful intimate sound. Tamara demonstrated this piano wonderfully well and it was easy to imagine a piano like this being played by one of the characters in Jane Austen's novels.

The second downstairs room was full of the larger fortepianos. There were all kinds of pedal variations: knee pedals, four pedals, two pedals, etc.  Some of the pedals were originally intended to rustle parchment to give a "buzzing" sound like a John Cage prepared piano. Amazing. The pianos also had wildly different sorts of sounds, so playing the same piece on a different piano would give it a very different tonal quality.
I think everyone really enjoyed going to the museum and not just because our hosts made cookies for all their younger guests. I know I could spend endless hours here exploring different pianos if given the chance. Unfortunately this museum is moving to La Connor, Washington at the end of the month which is about an hour north of Seattle. However, it may be worth the occasional trip.
For more information on George and Tamara's local Seattle concerts that they organize, they have a Musique Du Jour Presents website.