I challenge you to a Duet!

Hmm...  This was a June musing that never quite got there.  

The Frederick County Music Teachers Association meets regularly on the second Tuesday of the month, to plan various performance opportunities for our music students, to learn from other, more experienced pedagogues, (ha! just looked that one up.  "Pedagogue: another name for teacher, but one who is strict, stiff, or old-fashioned", also "dull, formal, or pedantic".  We are none of those things!) and to have fun.  (Exactly!)  We save the last meeting at the end of the school year for a teachers' duet challenge.  

Typically, we hear piano duets.  We were fortunate this year to encourage a violinist to perform with piano accompaniment.  Yes, Karen has taught piano lessons for many years, but this year she joined us as a student of violin.  Take it from someone who knows -- picking up the violin as an older adult is quite the challenge.  Karen did a great job.  We enjoyed hearing Brahms' Hungarian Dance #5, three selections from Moszkowski's Five Spanish Dances, Beethoven's Sonata in D, Op. 6, the Rondo movement, and Handel's Bouree, as well as a piano arrangement of Beethoven's 6th Symphony, the 3rd movement.  The 2 piano teachers who performed this last piece are working through the full symphony, one movement each year.  Interestingly, the 3rd movement doesn't "end" but slides attaca subito into the 4th movement, so we'll be sitting on the edge of our seats until next June to hear the conclusion.  

A special treat was the performance of 3 piano trios.  Yes, that's 6 hands on a single keyboard!  Vandall's Triple Dip, Petite Valse by Corteaux, and Olson's Out...Standing!  This last piece is most curious.  The 3rd played does not get a seat, but moves behind the other 2 players. playing high, playing low, and occasionally elbowing the other 2 out of the way to play in the middle register.  No, I guess we do not live up to Mr. Webster's definition of pedagogue.  We have too much fun!  

Maybe next year, we will hear more violins, and maybe something with a guitar or harp.  Whatever, it will be great!  As I've said repeatedly here, we have too much fun.  😊

Piano Pizza Party 2025

Summertime, and the living is…easy?  I just hosted 6 elementary aged students at a Piano Pizza Party.  Ha, I’m exhausted!  But I think they enjoyed it.  I typically host this particular event before the Sonatina Festival in late winter.  And I usually have the older kids in attendance.  I like to give the aspiring musicians a chance to play through their sonatinas, from memory, for an audience, before they have to face an adjudicator.  It gives them a chance to spot any weaknesses in their grasp of the music, and together we have another few weeks to iron out the wrinkles.  That particular event never came to pass this year, and the younger kids were itching for some pizza.  So....

We reviewed the scales they each learned this year.  Over the year, my younger students each made a  "scale octopus", with 8 arms, for each of the 7 letters of the musical alphabet plus an additional A for the octave.  They learned 5-finger scales and added beads to the octopus' arms to represent the scales they mastered.         The older kids made longer chains, full octave scales with black and white beads to represent the key signature of each scale.  It has become quite the competition to get the longest chain!  (Sanna has played through the Circle of Fifths all the way to F#.)  Yesterday, they quizzed each other on the scales they'd learned, the key signatures, and the proper finger technic for playing scales.  (Seriously, they didn't want my input at all, but relied on each other for feedback!) 

They also played a piano ensemble rendition of Pachelbel’s Canon in D, (see Jennifer Boster, at theplayfulpiano.com) with the various themes building on each other.  The Canon in D Piano Ensemble Strips contains 17 2-measure phrases from Pachelbel's Canon. Jennifer has 2 pianos, and in her video, I think she accommodates up to 8 kids at a time, each new theme adding to the mix.  I divvied up the 17 phrases among my students, and had them each master just one phrase, not knowing who would attend the party and how we would handle 17 phrases on just one piano.  The smaller party attendance was thus a plus.  Those who were game spread out across the keyboard.  Camille started with the opening phrase in the bass clef, Sanna then added the treble melody, and Sam filled in between them.  Yes, we lacked some of the more intricate phrases, but it worked out well for all involved.  They each played the same rhythm, all quarter notes, and they played well.  They recognized the need to maintain a steady tempo and they now understand my admonition not to stop for mistakes.  Sam said, "I had to listen just to myself, so I didn't get lost!"  They also appreciated the joy of playing together, not something pianists get to do too often.  I hope to try it again with more advanced students and see what we can create!  

We finished the piano part of the party with a few solo performances.  Eamon, my youngest student, played Flying, consisting of 2 notes set to a rhythm up the keyboard.  He was very happy to show off his mastery!  Alex played a piece he had composed himself.  Sanna, also relatively new to the studio, attempted The Movie Thriller, from memory, and we were thrilled that she remembered most of it!  And Hazel performed 3 pieces!  Happy Birthday, which she is learning for her own birthday next week, and Cracker Jacks, which she had not mastered as of her last lesson but aced yesterday! She also gaver an encore performance of her recital version of Ode to Joy.  Then we moved outside for pizza and lemonade.  So happy the weather cooperated; 6 little kids was a lot for me in my little studio!

I love to provide performance opportunities for my students, the formal recitals and the very informal events.  These latter events give the kids confidence that they can do it!  And confidence that they can help each other as well.  I had intended to finish out with a group production of Chopsticks, but alas, we ran out of time.  That will have to be our summer project.

Winter Cabaret

 A fun night!  It was very cold, and snow is predicted, which tends to keep folks in this town behind closed doors.  But not tonight!  Tonight was our annual Winter Cabaret, an event for my piano students to show off what they've learned since the Halloween Recital, and an excuse to keep them practicing over the school break.    

New this year, I invited alumni to perform.  Alumnae, actually.  One former student has "graduated" from piano to clarinet.  She and her sister played a piano/clarinet duet that was beautiful.  This same sister is studying music and anthropology, and opened the program with Mendelssohn, and knocked my socks off!  The third alumna is a music theater major this year; she and her brother played a piano/violin duet, also spectacular.  Around these three acts, my younger students offered their own fare, from Ode to Joy and Jingle Bells to The Dreidle Song and Silent Night.  We also heard a heartfelt performance of The Christmas Song, from A Charlie Brown Christmas.  This last piece was still iffy at the lesson earlier this week, but what a little pressure can do for the practice curve!  

The Winter Cabaret has become a favorite performance venue.  Low-key, with cookies and apple cider, with Playdough (to mold young musicians) and pen and paper (to draw on their creativity), everyone participates in one way or another.  The format has changed over the years, but always enjoyed by all.