Here’s a Thursday morning improvisation on one of our public pianos here in Guelph, Ontario. Every September, 12 pianos are placed outside various establishments throughout the downtown core. The project is called Happy Making and it invites residents to indulge their creativity in a public space.
Playing with Presence is a three part series geared towards pianists and those with sedentary jobs. Its aim is to cultivate awareness of the body, establishing a calmer and healthier approach to playing and working. Today’s entry will examine the Alexander Technique.
I am happy to announce that my piano studio is now opening up a second room for lessons!
They say that life never moves in a straight line. Although I’ve always been an industrious student, I’ve never really had a clear sense about where I was going when it came to a career. At one point in time I wanted to become a pilot, I even did the ground school for it. But for some reason that, like many things, never materialized. In my final year of high school it came time to decide what to do next.
Of course, there was always music. I had played piano most of my life, and when I wasn’t Continue reading
Image: Mon Shop Vintage
Musicians don’t always come from musical families. My uncle Leif, on my mother’s side, was a trained baritone, guitarist, and music teacher, so I knew the music gene was in there somewhere. But my parents were not trained musicians, though they liked listening to Elvis, John Denver, and the 3 Tenors, and my mother did enjoy singing and playing the autoharp.
This fact didn’t hinder my dad, when they met with a new piano teacher who wanted to know more about the parents.
During my mid teens, I remember performing Mozart’s Fantasia in D minor for the grade 9 piano category in Guelph Kiwanis Music Festival. There was a good handful of students in this class. I didn’t have a lot of experience performing in competition, so as with many young performers, my nerves got the best of me.
Something that I don’t mention in my personal bio is my experience with my first piano teacher.
When I was 5 my parents enrolled me in a local music school which they had thought was an extension of the Royal Conservatory of Music. Though the name was similar it was everything but, as we discovered over the next couple of years.