PA Shorts: Resilience
I was perusing a discussion on one of the social media groups I belong to and was struck by a comment on resilience. The discussion concerned judges and whether certain…
PA Shorts: Competition With A Twist
Last Saturday, I had the privilege of adjudicating for a piano competition about a 90 minute drive from here. The format was pretty much what you would expect: four divisions…
PA Shorts: Say Whaaat???
The judge's comment sheet read: "I'm sorry but the left pedal is not used for color. Good try anyway." I read it again. It still said the same thing. What…
Duty or Joy?
A gonga post by John Terrauds of Musical Toronto made me sit up and take notice last week. In it, he wrote about his experiences taking on a group of…
PA Shorts: Then And Now
In the beginning of the school year when I was nine, all eighty or so of us in the 4th grade were shepherded into the cafeteria of our Northern California…
What’s On The Inside
“Wow !” I said, “You are like a different pianist!” And she was. Before, there had been surges and awkward accents in the opening to her Intermezzo, impossible to remove…
Becoming a Non-Commissioned Piano Teacher
The tweet said, "Make time for non-commissioned work." I thought, Non-commissioned??? Have I ever even been given a commission??? This week, thanks to a post by Richard Byrne of Free…