Happy New Year 2010

Best wishes for a successful and productive 2010 (which should correctly be pronounced "twenty-ten" - collaborative pianists are the diction police after all), as well as a healthy and innovative second decade of this century. Stay tuned for a couple of important announcements over the next few days...

(Image from Erica Reid's photostream on Flickr)

Top Collaborative Piano Blog Posts of 2009 Part 4

The new decade is almost upon us! Here is the final installment of memorable articles, videos, and links from 2009:

• H1N1 Precautions for Piano Teachers
  Keep yourself and your students safe with these simple precautions.
• Piano Quartet Links and Resources
  For your violin, viola, cello, and piano ensemble awesomeness.
• Professional Pianists vs. Cheap Pianists
  You get what you pay for. You really do.
• Harpsichord Collection at the Royal Conservatory
  Take a walk in the atrium of the RCM in Toronto and you'll meet up with these beautiful instruments.
• Stefani Germanotta aka Lady Gaga Live at NYU in 2005
  She can play! Who woulda thought?
• The Boston Trio Plays the Ravel Piano Trio 1st Movement
  Rarely will you hear the Ravel played with such elegance and beauty.
• Roger Vignoles in The Battle Hymn of the Accompanist
  Go Roger!
• Some Thoughts on the Battlestar Galactica Piano Version of All Along the Watchtower (aka the Cylon Activation Song)
  That's the song....that's the frakkin' song....
  

The Latest from Forgotten Keys

Here are the latest photos from the Forgotten Keys pool on Flickr. For optimal viewing pleasure of these sad but wonderful abandoned instruments, be sure to watch on fullscreen...

Top Collaborative Piano Posts of 2009 Part 3

Hope you've all had a great holiday season so far. For most of us, there are just a few more days left until the madness starts up again and continues unabated until June. Here is part the third of the best and most popular posts of 2009:

• Susan Tsagkaris Sings Puccini's In Questa Reggia
  A recording that dramatic soprano Susan Tsagkaris and I did in early June.
• Collaborative Piano: Changing Career Paths and Skill Sets
  Neither your career path nor your skill set are set in stone but need constant reassessment in today's economy.
• Audition Pianists: Opera vs. Musical Theatre
  My take on Susan Eichhorn's article on the requirements of pianists in the audition room.
• Arnold Schoenberg's Opus 11....Played by Cats
  Teh kitteh liek 2 pulay moozik wif hexachordal combinatoriality.
• Nora the Cat in Piano Catcerto
  Teh kitteh liek to pulay wif teh orchester.
• Elizabeth Schwartzkopf master class from 1980...with great Roger Vignoles footage
  A clip of Vignoles from nearly 30 years ago and playing in fine form, as usual.
• 16 Mile Creek, Oakville
  Some shots I took on one of my summer walks.
• 10 Reasons for Collaborative Pianists to Consider Teaching Piano
  The dark side beckons...
• In Today's Metro
  It would appear that Wendy and I are celebrities, thanks to the roving camera of Enza Anderson...
• Gil Shaham Does the Zapateado
  A great viral video featuring a wild chase across midtown Manhattan.
• Concert Hall, Pripyat
  Alas, this performance space will never again see live music events.
  
• Schimmel Pegasus and Cylon Raider: Separated at Birth?
  Either Schimmel Pegasus pianos are grown in vats or Cylon Raiders are built by superior European piano technicians.
  

Merry Christmas 2009

Merry Christmas from the Collaborative Piano Blog and best wishes that the holiday season brings you lots of quality time with family and friends. It's only a short time until the new year rolls around and the madness starts up again!

(Image at left from the Tapestry New Opera Works 30th Anniversary Gala is by Brian Mosoff Photography)

Top Collaborative Piano Blog Posts of 2009 Part 2

The second installment of 2009 top posts:

• How to Charge for Festival Accompanying
  My recommendations on festival accompanying best practices.
• More About Festival Accompanying Rates
  s@bd offers her advice on a practical system that offers voice teacher, and voice students an efficient, practical, and economic way to have a single pianist play for all of a studio's festival classes.
• Support Staff?
  My outing of a county college in Texas which offered an extremely low-paying non-faculty on-call staff accompanist position. Gotta read the comments on this one.
• Word of the Day: Accomp-er-collaborative Pianist
  You're a what?
• Accompanist or Collaborative Pianist?
  Apparently there are still journalists out there that think that "collaborative pianist" is a newly invented term.
• 3 Things Pianists and Piano Teachers Should Take Into Account When Setting Hourly Rates
  Maximize the power of your individual brand while cleverly fitting into a musical community's economy.
• Creating First Experiences in Collaboration
  Those first guided steps in collaboration can be so important later on...
• 7 Useful Resources for Identifying Intervals by Ear
  That 10% of an RCM exam can go a long way towards creating a whole musician.

The rest of the series:


Part 1

Quote of the Day

Amazed at how many students of mine found the best example of a ground bass was, in fact, the "inhalitus" in Bach's Cigarette Cantata.

--@DFelsenfeld on Twitter

Top Collaborative Piano Blog Posts of 2009 Part 1

This is the first in a four-part series on the top Collaborative Piano Blog articles from the last year, in case you missed them the first time around...

• My First Commercial - For the 2008 Royal Conservatory Piano Syllabus
  Yes, I did wear makeup, talked from a teleprompter, and had my own hand model. But it was a great opportunity to talk about the newly launched RCM/NMCP Piano Syllabus, a huge step forward for the RCM's curriculum.
• Bush's Final Press Conference Set to Music by Henry Hey
  One almost feels sorry for George Bush in his last days as president, already condemned by history and relegated to a caricature - grist for the creative mind of Henry Hey, who had previously set a Sarah Palin interview to music.
• The February 2009 Music Education Blog Carnival
  My contribution to the ongoing Music Education Carnival Project, with lots of MusEd links from around the blogosphere.
• Open Comment Thread: What Are the World Concerto Reductions of All Time?
  An open question from LSU's Jan Grimes led to a torrent of gripes and kvetches about the absolute worst in concerto reduction failage.
• Elizabeth Gilbert on the Creative Process
  The author of Eat, Pray, Love talks on a TED video about the idea that the creative process is jump-started not by oneself, but by a Muse.
• Elena Obraztsova Sings Acerba Voluttà
  Observe the awesomeness of a great Russian soprano at the height of her powers in concert in Japan via the wonders of Soviet television.
• Classical Music's Encounter With Twitter
  Like it or not, Twitter is big these days. You can investigate more at my lists of Classical Musicians and Classical Music Organizations.
• 9 Categories of Excuses for Missed Rehearsals and Coachings
  Jennifer Peterson's first guest article for CPB looks at the myriad ways that singers and instrumentalists somehow manage to finagle their way out of pianist sessions.
• Condoleezza Rice Plays the Dvorak Piano Quintet at Aspen
  Diplomat, author, possible love-interest of Canadian politician Peter McKay, pianist. Observe Condy in all her pianistic awesomeness at the Aspen Music Festival.
• Tapestry's Opera To Go Runs March 26-29 at Harbourfront in Toronto
  One of my fave projects of 2009, this evening of four new operas resulted in three Dora nominations in the Best New Musical/Opera category.
• Coaching Recitative: Subliminal Recit Technique
  Jennifer Peterson's second guest post looked at a systematic way to help singers approach recit from a text-centered process.

And finally,

• Monster List of 100+ Resources on the Collaborative Piano Blog
  There has long been a need for a on this blog for a centralized CPB resouce list. You can also find a link to this list at the header of each page between the Home and Subscribe links.
  

[Open Comment Thread] How Do You Feel About Online Piano Tutorials?

Opening a can of worms here...

The route that many young musicians take in starting their encounter with the piano is changing very quickly these days. I'm speaking about the rise of online piano tutorials, which are increasingly becoming part of the piano pedagogy world, with their informative, engaging, and (mostly) free content. As blogged about by David Story in the Hamilton-Halton ORMTA blog and Patrick on Piano Street, online video tutorials (including popular ones by Yoke Wong, Hugh Sung, and webpianoteacher) can be both a blessing and a curse. And while I'm still a champion of the power of one-on-one teaching, I'm increasingly asking my students to watch some of these videos as a supplement to what they learn in lessons. After all, they're on YouTube (where students hang out anyway) and they're free.

My questions to the Collaborative Piano Blog community:

Is the genre of the online piano tutorial a natural evolution of the piano lesson that can easily be integrated into one-on-one instruction, or is it a use of technology that will wrest increasing numbers of beginners from traditional lesson/class instruction into the more streamlined business model of online mass instruction? Should piano teachers be excited or worried about this development? How can piano teachers take advantage of online lesson videos both from the content delivery and content creation vantage point?

(Image from piblet's photostream on Flickr)

Examining in Ohio

This week I'm examining for the National Music Certificate Program in Cincinnati, Ohio (West Chester, to be precise). The terrible internet connection in my hotel room resulted in a frantic search for fast and free wifi in the neighborhood. Fortunately, I discovered a Barnes & Noble location a few minutes from my hotel, so the B&N Starbucks is now the location of my regular West Chester office hours until Sunday.

What makes this experience memorable is that I'm examining in the performance space at Premier Pianos, which features a brand-new out-of-the-factory Steinway D Concert Grand. It's a rare experience indeed for these young pianists to have the chance to play a world-class instrument for their exams, so thanks go out to Greg Kottmann for making the space and piano available.

I've also quickly become addicted to Skyline Chili's 3-way chili and coneys (thanks to a recommendation from Jan Grimes). If you have any other tips on great Cincinnati restaurants and hangouts, post your comments now, as I'm only in town until Sunday...