Happy 2019!!

Oh my! 2019!! I am looking forward to a great new year of blogging about things that inspire me with piano playing, teaching, and listening to others. I hope you had a great season of holidays as we wrapped up 2018. My personal November and December flew by like a whirlwind as in addition to celebrating Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Years and all the performances that season entails, I was married on New Year’s weekend! It was a wonderfully fun time, but kept me from writing.

With the new year, I am very excited to get back at it and have a number of articles in mind regarding piano teaching, practicing, and accompanying. Three topics that I am digging into and learning about and will begin the year with are:

• Recreational Music Making - Have you heard about it? It is an exciting alternative way to learn piano or any instrument. I’m looking forward to share what I’m learning and discovering as I explore new ways to teach my students. If I know one thing as a teacher, it is that not every student learns or excels the same way!
  
• Learning and teaching jazz piano - We’ll dig into ways to learn jazz piano and improvisation, explore some of the great resources available, and discover new ways to grow as jazz pianists and jazz teachers.
  
• The “magic” of muscle memory - I talk about this a lot with my students as it is something we utilize all the time, for instance there is a reason we practice scale fingerings or be particular with fingerings in the first place. Muscle memory can be a tremendous help in playing the piano, but can be a problem at times too. I’m looking forward to exploring the magic of muscle memory with you on this blog!
  

A lot of great ideas and discussions ahead, but to start the year, I will share this great video of what is easily one of the most popular and recognizable piano concertos: The Grieg Piano Concerto! This is often one of the first piano concertos a pianist plays and is played beautifully and expressively in this video by Khatia Buniatishvili. Enjoy this performance and watch for new posts this January!