About that Masterclass ...

I know I've mentioned the masterclass here a few times, but I don't think I've said much about it.

It's going to be conducted by pianist Orion Weiss, who will be performing with the Augusta Symphony the night before (Sept. 27). Which reminds me, I need to get tickets.

OK. I just took a break from writing this to buy a couple of symphony tickets. $158 -- ouch! I could have gotten balcony seats for just $60, but I'm so deaf and my eyes are bad. Anyway, the deed is done.

So, four area students will be participating in this masterclass. An 11-year-old, a 16-year-old, a 17-year-old, and me. I saw the pieces being played, and one is Liszt's Consolation 3, which I played back in high school. It was one of my first "two-against-three" pieces.

Two of the pieces seem to be intermediate/early-advanced, and I think the Consolation and my Chopin are probably comparable, as far as level. So it should be a good little masterclass. Mr. Weiss will also perform at the end, so that'll be good.

I'm excited about it. Also a little nervous. I'd hoped to really double down on getting the Chopin back up to speed in August and September, but that hasn't happened. So now I'm doing best. I know the piece well, have known it now for several months, so I should be OK.

The big unknown is whether my mind will go blank when I'm playing in front of an audience. It nearly always does. I need to practice playing for people ... yeah, sometime in the next 16 days.

So, that's the masterclass. Wish me luck!

Comments

Eureka! Secondary Dominant!

I am such a nerd, and I love being a nerd! Today I was working on Section 5 of You Are My Sunshine, specifically on getting this section up to performance level. In other words, I was practicing being a performer , not an arranger . But then, of course, I came up with another idea. I had just played the delicate sixths and descending rag rolls of "when skies are gray" (I chord) and then moved to the parallel octaves of "you never know, dear" (leading to IV). The shift sounded abrupt to me. Harsh. It needed something. It needed musical WD-40. Something to ease the hinge between textures. And then I stumbled upon it! Right before moving to IV, I can slip in a V7/IV — a secondary dominant! So I tried it, and it sounded so good that I actually yelled "Secondary dominant!" out loud in my house like I was Archimedes discovering water displacement in the bathtub. It's such a small thing. One little chord. But it smooths that transition, leaning the harmony ...

The Amazing Practice Tracker 2.0: Leveling Up My Piano Game

(Apologies for the cheesy clip art. I needed to come up with something, or the Blogger template would show a fuzzy, overly-enlarged snippet of the first chart below.) When I showed my husband my piano practice tracker, he said I should market and sell it. Ha. It’s not for sale, but I’m excited to share how this tool has transformed my practice—and why it might inspire all three of my readers. Since my last post about the Amazing Practice Tracker, I’ve made it even better. Here’s a peek at how it works, using my June data. All The Pretty Colors, All the Pretty Winners My tracker now sparkles with color: darker shades for active pieces, lighter ones for maintenance, technique, and sight-reading. Each day, the piece I practice most gets a bright yellow highlight—a little “gold medal,” if you will. (Click image for a slightly larger view.) A leaderboard automatically shows the day’s top piece and time. And if that isn't enough, I keep track of the month's leaders--specifically, ho...

The Tyranny of the Dots

In the Billy Joel documentary And So It Goes , Billy talks about "reading the dots." He didn't want—or need—to "read the dots," meaning the music notes on the page. He had developed his own rock 'n' roll piano style and, after a few years of classical training, he left the dots behind. I didn't want to read the dots, either, once upon a time. As a little kid, I had a good ear and could quickly figure out just about any tune on the piano. But in first grade, I finally started piano lessons, thus beginning my life with the dots. The Wall of Dots Between Me and Music I hated the dots! I wanted to learn them, sure, but it was so hard. If my teacher played what was written, I could play it right back for him. But if he asked me to play it from the dots, I felt like I would pop a blood vessel in my brain. It was so frustrating for my six-year-old self to have the code to a simple tune sitting silently before my eyes and not be able to crack it and bring th...

Picking Up the Pieces: A Piano Practice Journal

Search This Blog