It’s Halloween. I’m excited because This Little Music Studio on the Hill is turning into a Musical House of Horrors for the amusement of all my piano students and the neighbourhood kids.
 
In the last couple of years, the street where my studio is situated has become a good spot for trick o treating. This year, Halloween falls on my teaching night. Rather than be annoyed when all my lessons are interrupted by those pesky trick-o-treaters, I have decided to make our piano studio the “Musical House of Horrors” for the night, and all students are invited to participate in a Special Edition Halloween Workshop.
 
In this workshop students will
• Dress up (The most important part)
• Play a scary sound track of “incidental” music (the best type of sound track)
• Perform music by memory
• Perform in ensembles and duets with other students
• Perform a solo
• Make a Halloween inspired Music History Project
• Go trick-o-treating afterwards with friends and family
 
Students are encouraged to bring family, siblings or invite a friend to be part of their spooked out audience. Activities for the audience includes, taking photos in the photo booth, apple bobbing, trick o treating and generally being spooked out or dancing along (whichever comes first) to the music and sounds being emitted by my students from the comfort of the Halloween inspired studio. 

November 
​Gray's Piano World

​We smashed last year’s record!
 
35 performers
16 pianos
42 (or more) hands
 
The performer count was a bit controversial. In fact, I think this is a conservative count. At the end, all performers and parents were welcomed on stage to perform. At this point I think there was over 40 performers playing the piece.
 

​2016 was the third time The Piano Orchestra has taken place. So why do we do it?
 
To introduce new learners to the piano
Five weeks before the event, free or low cost community classes were held in locations around Reservoir. The piece was written to introduce both children and adult learners to play the piano for the first time, with options for extending those who have been learning for some time already.
 
To get people into piano shops
To encourage families and the broader community to enjoy time together at the local music shop. For some kids (and possibly adults too), this event is the first time they have ever touched an acoustic piano. It is a humbling moment. Local music shops are incredible places to learn about how to express your self through sound and how that sound affects those around us. It is easy to feel that one needs that unattainable sense of “talent” to step inside a music shop. This event aims to grant permission to all to walk in the door and give it a go at every stage of your own personal music journey.
 
To connect with other piano teachers, students and musicians
This is a non-competetive event that lends itself to learning music with friends and strangers. Thanks Mellanie Shaylor, Reservoir Neighbourhood House, Maharishi Primary School and Gray’s Piano World for getting involved and encouraging your students to take part. This year we also had Reservoir’s resident drummer, Andy Altree-Williams keeping things funky on drums.
 
To be a part of the Darebin Music Feast
 
Darebin Music Feast is when Darebin puts on a show of brilliant arts events in all pockets of the region. This was the chance for piano students of all levels to get out and get proud about being artists in our creative community.
 
To make music with family and friends
The piece was easy to play. It had lots of repetition. There were different parts appropriate to different stages of learning. By the end of the performance, everyone in the room knew what to expect and could get up and have a go, whether they had learnt the piece prior to the event or not. Mums, Dads, grandparents, siblings, everyone was encouraged to have a go.
 
Learning about Risk
The Piano Orchestra is a lesson in learning how to take risks in performance. When learning how to deal with performance anxiety, all performers need experience in a variety of performance formats to discover their strengths.
The “performance” aims to bring together some notes, a story and a few ideas into a piece of music rather than to perform a piece that is polished and ready to present to an examination board. It could all land in a heap, at any moment. As a performer, a teacher, a conductor, or a concert presenter this is a very terrifying prospect. And that is the risk we all take together.
 
This performance allows for mistakes, it allows for correction, it allows for a bit of silliness and fun with friends, it caters for young performers who can’t sit still. It caters for adults and young students who can. It aims to create an inclusive performance space.
 
Was is a success?
To be honest, it all came together much easier than I thought it would. It sounded like an enjoyable piece of music from the start. I was expecting a bit more chaos.
 
Is it every piano shop owner’s worst nightmare to have all pianos in the shop being played at once? Quite possibly. But Gavin Gray from Gray’s Piano World, welcomed the event with open arms. Fortunately, everyone in the room was given a scratch training course in how to be a professional pianist so all pianos were handled with care.
 
The greatest moment for me was just after the performance. Everyone was still on a high from such a moment of glory that they could not drag themselves away from the pianos. If they didn’t play during the performance they were playing now. They were unafraid, they were noisy, there were many smiles, so I can only assume they were having fun. There was a new found respect for the instruments in the room and an affirmation in everyone’s ability to play them. 
 

Group piano lessons are one of my favourite ways to teach beginners. I run group classes for beginner students from ages 5 – 10, with a maximum of 4 students in each class.
 
Here are some of the benefits of group piano lessons.
 
• Singing. It’s much easier to sing with kids in a group. Singing is the best way to internalise and understand music. Once a child can sing a song it is much easier to transfer it to any instrument.
 
• Social. Piano can be an isolating instrument at times. In groups, kids make new friends or explore music with existing friends. Duets are common place in a group music class.
 
• Group morale. Learning piano with a grown up can get a bit daunting at times, especially for very young learners. In a small group, children support each other’s progress as they watch each other learn. When in a small group of supportive peers, children feel less intimidated by new experiences. They express themselves through speech, physical movement and musical sounds that makes sense to kids. They are ready to tackle new musical challenges.
 
• Motivation. When kids learn together they motivate each other. Together they learn how to practice during the week at home and recognise the need to keep up with what’s going on in class each week.
 
• Games. Playing games are fun. They are also a great way to learn the fundamentals of music. Playing games with your peers is sometimes a bit more fun than playing with a grown up.
 
• Performance. Regularly performing for peers builds a child’s confidence and reaffirms their ability to progress through new repertoire.
 
• Cost. Group classes are cheaper than individual lessons and can sometimes make learning music affordable for families.
 
If you are interested to find out more about group learning or to find out if there is a place available in a group class for your child, get in contact.

​22 people and 29 hands performed on 10 pianos at
Gray’s Piano World,
On Saturday 24 October 2015,
as part of the
​Darebin Music Feast. 

​The Piano Orchestra Project is an event that sets out to prove that anyone can play the piano. It’s also a great excuse to make a lot of noise at the local piano shop. Now in its second year, the piano orchestra project is set to be an annual event, and we hope to get more people each year.
 
The piece, My Cat Plays Piano was written especially for the occasion. It involved performers of all levels, including music readers and non-readers a like. The piece involved black keys and white keys. There were big glorious sounds and small sneaky sounds. Piano students learnt the piece during their piano lessons. Beginner students used their own experience to teach new kids the music on the day. Some families learnt the music together at home before coming to the event. Much to everyone’s surprise, after a very short rehearsal, we performed a piece of music that was longer than the average kid’s (and adult’s) attention span. 

The Piano Orchestra Project is an opportunity for those considering piano lessons to have the confidence to get up and muck around on these magnificent instruments. For some, this event is the first time that a child has touched an acoustic piano. It is a humbling experience for parents and teachers to be witness to that first step in a musical journey. Especially when that moment is on stage, at a public event, in front of an adoring audience. 

Celebrate Piano Week, was a promotional community project initiated by the Australian division of publisher Hal Leonard and took place in March 2015. Hal Leonard commissioned a piece from one of their represented artists, Elena Kats-Chernin, and made this piece free to the public in the first week of March. Piano teachers, students and pianists from around the world were invited to play the piece in any which way they liked. The time line this year made it difficult to do anything other than play it in our lessons, however, we thoroughly enjoyed learning it and taking part in the project. It was a great way to learn more music by one of my favourite composers, Elena Kats-Chernin. It also gave us the opportunity to talk about a living Australian composer and to think about what it must be like to work as one. With my students, I took the opportunity to get in contact with Elena and ask her some questions about her work. She was incredibly generous with her time and her answers and it gives me great pleasure to share the interview with you here.

Elena Kats-Chernin is one of Australia’s most well known composers and performers. She grew up in Tashkent (which was in the Soviet Union but is now the capital of independent Uzbekistan). She now lives and works as a composer and performer in Sydney. She has written many pieces that have become very popular including Deep Sea Dreaming for the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games Opening Ceremony. Eliza’s Aria was written for the ballet Wild Swans and has become very famous through being played at the beginning of ‘Late Night Live’, a radio show hosted by Phillip Adams on ABC Radio National. The song has also been used in TV commercials, and remixed by DJ Mark Brown.


When did you start learning piano? (Fintan 12)
I was 4 years old and I picked up piano playing from watching my older sister's lessons, I really liked playing pieces that she was learning and it seemed really easy and fun.


How do you compose a piece of music? (Sweeney, 12)
First I think about what instruments I am writing for and how long the players or the commissioner would like the piece to be. It can range from 1 minute small piece (a miniature-as a recent piece for Synergy percussion) to a 40 minute symphony (Symphonia Eluvium for Queensland Symphony Orchestra in 2011) or a two hour opera.  So, depending on how long the piece is I try and create a short or long melody (or a pattern) and a set of chords that might go along with that melody. Sometimes it works out right away and sometimes it takes a few days to come up with something that is worth developing.  Once the initial material is found, the next stage is create a piece from there, many things change during this process and sometimes it has happened that once the piece was finished, the actual first melody was cut. 


What is a rain puzzle? How long did it take you to write the piece? (May Linn, 9)
This piece did not take long to write at all, perhaps a day-it has a resemblance to my piece Green Leaf Prelude, which has similar chords, but has a different pattern of notes in a chord and a very different structure. I had an idea for the chords that shift a little bit each two bars, via a change in one or two notes. I call it a puzzle because, like a puzzle, you should look at it from a few points of view, hence my suggestions to play different versions of this piece: for ex., each bar in reverse order of notes, or start  each bar from 3rd note and then play perhaps with two or more pianists/students, each starting on a different or same note in a different octave or perhaps one plays on one piano in staccato and the other plays with pedal on another instrument. Rain: because it felt like drops of water and I think I wrote it on a rainy day.


How did your early life experiences in Russia influence your playing style? (Lucien, 18)
My playing… well, I don't play very often. Mostly, if I am on stage playing piano, it is with Tamara-Anna Cislowska, she is a good friend and a wonderful musician and she can improvise from looking at my sketches, so we have fun playing chords and melodies that are not in actual piece, hence our performances are different from concert to concert. 

In Russia I had a very good teacher, but not at the beginning. My first few years I did not have a good technique and my hands got very tired very quickly. When I was 10 years old. I found a new teacher and she spent a year teaching my hands to relax and use the weight of the arm to produce a centred sound, without pushing the keys too harshly. She also valued legato very much and she had a lot of patience. For a year I was only allowed to play easy pieces and many scales and arpeggios, not pieces that I was used to playing and which I really wanted to play, like Beethoven sonatas or Chopin Waltzes. But once that year passed it became easier for me to sustain playing for longer periods. She also taught me to differentiate between playing Bach and Tchaikovsky, for example, to use a different kind of sound between different composers. I also loved watching great pianists like Richter and Gilels, they sometimes gave concerts in Yaroslavl, the town in which I was growing up. 

Can you describe a favourite memory of learning piano in Russia?
Having cups of tea with my wonderful new piano teacher Nadejda Nikolayevna.  She was very kind to me and yet she was also very strict and I will never forget how I had to play just one note over and over again, I had to play it, keep the finger down and then stand up while holding this position and she would be checking if the weight of the arm is shifting and I had to try and delay the tension in the arm when I sat down again. This was done hundreds of times and with all the fingers of both hands and very slowly. I guess this was a test of patience for me as I was always a fast person and slow things are quite difficult for me. But now I really love thinking about those exercises. They did wonders for me.

How many compositions do you write in a year?
This depends on how many commissions I have a year and how big the works are. Some years I wrote 3 chamber works and in some years I wrote a symphony, and an opera. This year I wrote two operas, two concertos and two 25 minute dance pieces. So, this is the busiest year yet (2015). Am still working on one of the dance pieces.


In our emails you have mentioned that you were writing two operas, a dance piece, performing in concerts, participating in workshops and attending meetings, at the same time you were working on other projects and planning for overseas travel at the same time. I’m amazed that you even had time to read my emails! Is life always this hectic for you?
This year is especially busy, it is not always like that and I feel very lucky that I have so much work and I really love composing.  Next year is also very busy, but not as hectic as this one. However, I am planning to have 2017 and 2018 a bit less busy, because I really need to clean up and sort through my archives, I have boxes of paper everywhere, past and present projects!!! I wish I had a bit more clarity in my room. Sometimes scores just disappear and I spend hours looking for them….


You have written music across many instrumental styles. You have written piano compositions, orchestras, ballets, opera, choir, chamber ensembles. Do you have a favourite style to write for?
Actually I love writing for piano more than anything. Such a rich and vibrant instrument!   I do love writing for dance and silent film also. But usually I love any genre that I am working on right now. Chamber music is something that excites me quite a lot.

Your music is played by many people, at many different stages of their career or musical development. You have written several collections that are well loved by piano students and teachers. Your works are also played around the world by internationally renown performers. What is one of the most satisfying performances you have seen of your music?
There have been really many, but, because you are in Melbourne, I will name a Melbourne group that I have so far written 2 pieces for and am writing another at the end of this year. Flinders Quartet (string quartet), a beautiful ensemble. I wrote Re-Inventions for them in 2004 (for Genevieve Lacey and Flinders), and then I wrote Joyce's Mob for them, this was a private commission from a lady called Joyce.  And my next work for them is a piano quintet.  Often with new works it is played once and never again. Not so with Flinders Quartet, they played the above two pieces often. That fills me with gratitude and joy.


The Rain Puzzle is a very haunting piece that seems to resonate in the soul long after leaving the practice bench. The minimalist style of composition creates a sense of mystery for the performers as we try to decipher where the melody is, where the climaxes are and whether there is a narrative that accompanies it. Can you explain why you chose to write in this style for this piece?
You are very kind in giving The Rain Puzzle such a poetic description. I love minimalist style as it gives me a lot of freedom inside a strict frame,  I love it that each little feature or change is quite magnified in this particular style.  I am attracted to this kind of material and its treatment, very few means to say as much as one can. There is no story as such here, but what is important is the turns of harmony, when it does not quite resolve in the way you might expect it to resolve. I like connecting chords in an unpredictable "unlatching" way, this is a kind of a game for me, to see which chord can move to where… My writing is very intuitive, so when there is a certain form and structure that becomes apparent when you study it, it is not something I think about when composing, it comes as part of the process and I just go by the feeling: i.e. I get to a bar and think, I need something new to say here… in this bar I need to make a turn to the "left" or into a minor key or back to a previous chord.. things like that…. And I keep trying till I find something I like. Often there are pages and pages of music that end up in the bin… 


Where would you like to see The Rain Puzzle performed?
In many different places, in people's homes, in classrooms, in halls,  I can imagine 30 pianos…. not sure if it is possible to play on SKYPE, sound has to be good and I prefer acoustic to e-piano. 

Renown Australian piano educator, Elissa Milne, has written a great article for parents considering piano for their children. 10 Things You Should Do BEFORE Your Child Begins Piano Lessons, outlines very helpful advice for parents. 

For more articles on becoming a 'model piano parent', Gina from Diary of a Piano Mama, has lot's of easy tips up her sleeve. She's Australian which makes her perspective on music education highly valuable! Her article, Recipe for Success: The first 6 months of piano lessons, has lots of great piano lesson tips for beginner students and beginner (or returning) parents. 

The first Piano Orchestra performance took place at Prestige Pianos as part of International Piano Week 2014.

Piano students, parents and friends had a chaotic kind of fun at the inaugural Piano Orchestra, an event which was part of International Piano Week. Sonny Chua wrote a piece for the occasion called Umi's Lullby. A total of 14 players turned up at Prestige Pianos, a piano shop in Preston and together we created a version of Umi's Lullaby on 9 pianos. It was a fun challenge bringing it together and not quite knowing who was going to turn up or what was going to happen until the day.   

Among those performing were veteran teachers and performers, adult students, young learners and volunteers who have never had lessons but were willing to give it a go. We had duets and trios from parents, their children and younger siblings. There was a combination of those who could read music and those who couldn't. Everyone had a part to play. 

I had a number of aims when arranging the piece. I wanted families to experience practicing together at home. It was a way for parents and siblings to experience what it is like to prepare a piece for performance and the types of preparation one needs to go through. This will help to support students in their future musical endeavours. I also wanted a performance outlet for my adult students to be able to participate in without feeling like they were participating in a kids only event. It was public, but not pressured, so that the event promoted musical participation in a way that onlookers would see that learning the piano is not exclusive and high pressured. 

In the weeks leading up to the Piano Orchestra performance, all my students were excited with anticipation knowing that we were taking part in an International event. It was also very exciting knowing that the composer was watching and interested to find out what we would do with his piece. 

Thanks to Hal Leonard and to Sonny Chua for the opportunity to get involved. We are all looking forward to next year's piece and to learning more of Sonny's music. 

To read about International Piano Week in The Piano Teacher Magazine, follow the link here: