Have you tried to improvise yet? Have you taken that first, vital step to give it a go? If you’re struggling to get started I want you to stop reading right now! Grab your diary and schedule 3-4 five minute appointments with yourself over the next week. These are your improvisation slots – your moments […]
The nights are beginning to draw in, the conkers are getting fatter and shinier by the day and the hedgrows are full of ripening blackberries. As Autumn gradually begins to make its presence felt in the Northern Hemisphere we are equally as gently turning our thoughts towards the new term ahead. We’ve asked all the […]
I’m feeling smug! After having the best of intentions last year, I have already booked myself onto a summer school this year. As much as I love my teaching, lecturing and The Curious Piano Teachers work there comes a point where I start to need some inner nourishment. It is so important that we all […]
What was the best thing about being at the MTNA 2017 conference? Undoubtedly, it was meeting in person, people who had only been Facebook friends up till that point! I’m now back in the UK after an exciting and interesting few days over in Baltimore. Today’s blog is a brief overview of our time there. […]
We’ve arrived! The Curious Piano Teachers (and Ed, our curious elephant) are in Baltimore for the next 6 days attending the MTNA 2017 conference. True to our name we are intending to be curious about everything. As Sharon has a brand new baby I have been joined on my trip by one of our Curious […]
How and where does your best thinking happen? Are you able to sustain your concentration for quite long periods? Or do you find that after a while, you need to get up, move around and have a short break before resuming what you were doing? Young children in particular tend to learn best through action […]
Do you have any pieces of music that live especially close to your heart? Pieces that were first learnt a while ago, maybe when you were young, that somehow you keep returning to? For me one such piece is Dr Gradus ad Parnassum from Children’s Corner Suite by Claude Debussy. I first learnt it when […]
I was told by Olavo Alen that, in Cuba, “music is in the air.” This was back in 2005 when I spent a wonderful three weeks there, as part of my Churchill Travelling Fellowship. Music certainly did appear to be everywhere; every bar had a band and every street seemed to have salsa emanating from […]
I’ve found myself falling back into old ways a bit at the start of this term. I talked too much. I explained too much. And this meant that there wasn’t enough music making in lessons. It is so easy to slip into familiar and comfortable teaching habits especially when trying to juggle all the additional […]
Last week I presented the general principles behind messy piano. This week I am going to look at a messy lesson in more depth. As one-to-one instrumental teachers we have a potentially exciting and unique opportunity to explore how pupils can learn in new and deep ways. We are free to teach exactly how we […]