Podcast Highlights

Piano Inspires Podcast: Olga Kern

Written By Luis Sanchez, Olga Kern

To celebrate the latest episode of the Piano Inspires Podcast featuring Olga Kern, we are sharing an excerpted transcript of her conversation with Luis Sanchez. Want to learn more about Kern? Check out the latest installment of the Piano Inspires Podcast. To learn more, visit pianoinspires.com. Listen to our latest episode with Kern on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or our website!

Olga Kern performing at NCKP 2023: The Piano Conference.

Luis Sanchez: You live such an incredibly busy life with your teaching, your traveling, and your concertizing. How do you balance your life so that you can also have time to learn new repertoire or do other things?

Olga Kern: Yes, the balance is everything. I remember after winning the Van Cliburn Competition, there were so many concerts right away for me and traveling. I always wanted to do this. That was my life. I actually wanted to participate in a competition to have a possibility to perform, to be on stage. For me, that was the most important thing. Then when I got this—and you know, reading about Rachmaninoff’s life and he had 300 concerts a year—I was thinking [about] how he could even compose in between, you know, all of that incredible music and then perform at that level. Actually, traveling [those] days was not as easy as now. I was always thinking, “I want to try how it feels to have that many travels, concerts, different repertoire, orchestra performances, solo, chamber music.” It’s always different, plus the recordings, plus it’s all the time something happening.

For me, it was very challenging the first years to find the right balance. I have a very good friend—a Chinese woman [who] is really one of [my] best friends. She lives in Colorado, and she’s a piano teacher. She told me that balance is, of course, one of the most important things. Actually from her, she told me, “You really need to know when to stop, and just [breathe] between even practicing, just to find the balance of rest, and [doing] something else, and then work, and then the family; everything needs to be balanced.” To find this is very difficult, but it’s very necessary. So it took me a few years to find that balance, and I found it. Of course with the help—in my family situation—with the help of my mom because my son was very little, and without help, I couldn’t do it. My parents were always there for me, so I’m very thankful for that. Help is very important. I know that when I’m practicing, I can go for five hours non-stop. But then you [are] also tired in your mind. And then these five hours sometimes are not really productive.

Another example in Rachmaninoff’s memoirs: he was writing to one of his friends, “You know, I don’t have much time to practice because I’m traveling, I’m performing all the time. But if I have one-to-two hours a day, this productive practice is definitely better than to sit at the piano eight hours and have nothing achieved.” So I always was thinking—all of the travels I have—that actually I need to rest more, and then come to practice with the clear mind [for] two hours, but focused and working hard. And then in these two hours, you can really achieve so much more than [if] you have the whole day free. And you think, “Okay? I’m just—.” No, you really need to be focused, and you need to have [an] exact schedule in your mind, if you have that [many] things happening. My friends are always fascinated how I have everything in order, I am a very “on schedule” kind of person. I like to know what’s happening in the daytime, how much time I have, for this particular thing, for that particular thing. I like to schedule things. So I know my plan, especially on the day of the concert, or day of the travels. It’s always a different program I’m performing, and sometimes it’s a new piece. I always need to find the right balance and the right schedule for the old pieces I’m playing, for the new piece I’m working on. If I have a vacation, it’s fantastic. But usually a vacation is no more than one week. And you need to be very productive in that week. You also want to rest, it’s very important, otherwise the productivity of work is not the same. So I always try to find the time for rest, for a good time, [and] also to enjoy the theater—I love opera. So I try as much as I can on vacation to find time for this.

If you enjoyed this excerpt from Piano Inspires Podcast’s latest episode, listen to the entire episode with Olga Kern on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or our website!

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OLGA KERN: A Consummate and Positive ARTIST
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Piano Inspires Podcast: Ingrid Clarfield

Written By Pamela Pike, Ingrid Jacobson Clarfield

To celebrate the latest episode of Piano Inspires Podcast featuring Ingrid Clarfield, we are sharing an excerpted transcript of her conversation with Pamela Pike. Want to learn more about Clarfield? Check out the latest installment of the Piano Inspires Podcast. To learn more, visit pianoinspires.com. Listen to our latest episode with Clarfield on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or our website!

Shana Kirk, Marvin Blickenstaff, and Ingrid Clarfield at NCKP 2023: The Piano Conference.

Pamela Pike: When I was sort of first coming on the scene, if you will, when I was a young professional, you were a big star in our field, you really were. And you still are! But you know, I just—I attended so many of your sessions, and you know, it was just always a pleasure to be able to speak with you. You were always so kind to young professionals. But then it seemed like at the peak of your career you had this devastating stroke.

Ingrid Clarfield: It’s so interesting that word “devastating.” I can do it. It’s been sixteen years.

PP: But it could have been devastating!

IC: Could have been!

PP: The point is here again, you demonstrate your resilience and your persistence. So maybe talk through your recovery because it’s amazing.

IC: Well, what is interesting is that the day before, I was onstage doing a session with George Litterst on the Disklavier and I came home that night, woke up at four in the morning, and had a stroke. Still they don’t know why. But, as I tell people: I’m here, I’m alive and well. I don’t mean to minimize it. But I think for me, I was determined to go on. I did not know how I was going to and—a grad student who was helping me with stuff, I said, “Cancel everything.” I mean I was in a wheelchair drooling on drugs—very attractive. Anyway, and then I cancelled everything because I didn’t know how I was going to do anything. Then I get an email from Sigrid Luther. Do you know Sigrid?

PP: No, I don’t.

Ingrid Clarfield at NCKP 2023: The Piano Conference.

IC: Okay. Wonderful teacher in Chattanooga, Tennessee. “Oh, we’re so excited to sponsor your Ingrid Clarfield Pedagogy Workshop. We have got a grant from MTNA. I really don’t remember if it’s a phone call or an email, but probably an email. I was like, “Oh my god, we forgot somebody.” And so then I said, “Well, there’s a slight problem: I had a stroke.” “Oh!” And she was all embarrassed, and the loveliest woman anyway. No, it was an email because I needed time to think. I said, I wonder what it would be like if I said I’ll come if she plays my left hand because I knew she was a good pianist. But I first checked with Gary Ingle—good friend! I said, “How crazy would it be to say I’ll come do a conference and I’ll play with one hand? Do I charge half price?” So anyway, she agreed and I had no idea what I was doing, okay. Because she was so great and it went so well, that was how I came back. She subsequently—probably a half a dozen times—has been my left handed at MTNA conferences. Because it worked, I could continue to do it. I did not want to become a right hand pianist because there’s 8,000 pieces for left hand alone and four for right hand. But several people—like Dennis Alexander—wrote beautiful pieces for me. I wanted to do things my way, which was still me, but with somebody else. I’ve had over forty different people play my left hand in sixteen years. That was how I chose to go on. But I am convinced that it’s because of her and that it went so well that I thought, “I can do this.”

PP: It demonstrates a flexibility in your thinking, first of all, you know, that you were willing to try something different, but still be authentic to who you are.

IC: That’s—you’re really good with words. Authentic—that was it, because for me, that was important. I felt like what I do with pedagogy is important and it’s a little different—my style, to say the least. I wanted to still be me. I’ve been so lucky. And like today—like the young man you met here, he was in my pedagogy class. He was he was a student of Phyllis Lehrer and the fact that this is his first time to present like at a big conference to do this. I was really proud of him. There were certainly plenty of other people who worked with me and but I thought no, he’s helping me.

PP: Yeah, and you still have so much to contribute so there’s no reason to stop. You just have to find the alternate path forward.

IC: And find good left hands wherever I go!

If you enjoyed this excerpt from Piano Inspires Podcast’s latest episode, listen to the entire episode with Ingrid Clarfield on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or our website!

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Dedication to excellence: An interview with Ingrid Clarfield
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Piano Inspires Podcast: Artina McCain

Written By Artina McCain, Andrea Mcalister

To celebrate the latest episode of Piano Inspires Podcast featuring Artina McCain, we are sharing an excerpted transcript of her conversation with Andrea McAlister. Want to learn more about McCain? Check out the latest installment of the Piano Inspires Podcast. To learn more, visit pianoinspires.com. Listen to our latest episode with McCain on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or our website!

Artina McCain performing at NCKP 2023: The Piano Conference.

Andrea McAlister: One thing I love so much—and I ran out and got a copy as soon as it was available—is your publication with the 24 African American folk tunes. Just beautiful music.

Artina McCain: Oh, thank you.

Andrea McAlister: I think giving this gift to young students is—it’s tremendous. I just, I love the whole collection. I’ve given them out to my students. They’re all excited to play them. What does it mean to you to be able to create that for students? How did you come across this project to begin with?

Artina McCain: Oh, well, interestingly enough, I’m glad you asked that, because nobody’s ever asked me that. Way back in the day when Piano Magazine was Clavier Companion, I was doing some reviews for some of the books that would come out for Hal Leonard, like at the beginning of my career. I actually ran into a woman who was working on the editorial staff at the time and she said, “Hey, you want to do some reviews?” Like sure. That had to be at least a seven to eight year difference between the time that Hal Leonard approached me. So basically, they had seen my review all those years ago, and she calls me and says, “You know, you wrote a really great review for us.” “Like eight years ago!” “You want to write a book?” “What?” That’s exactly how it happened. Wow, you never know who’s watching your work.

Artina McCain

Andrea McAlister: You never know. And that’s where perseverance also pays because you never know what’s going to come around.

Artina McCain: Right. So you know, they in the meantime have created this fantastic folk song series of books that represent people from all over the world. They said, “Oh, we want to do the African American version of this. Do you want to do it?” “No! [Laughs] I never wrote a book in my life! Are you sure that you are calling the right person?” [Laughs] So they convinced me and I’m so glad that I did because you know, those resources weren’t available for me when I was a kid. You know, maybe I could have been a singer if my mom could have found some books to encourage me. So no, it means the world. And again, I’m glad that I kind of stepped out on faith to do it because it wasn’t something that I even dreamed that I would do, or that I dreamed would come out of doing a book review, you know, like eight years prior.

Andrea McAlister: Right? You just never know who’s watching and reading and appreciating the work that you are doing.

Artina McCain: Absolutely.

Andrea McAlister: I think through this book, you have created so many people who are appreciative that you’ve done the work. That you didn’t say no.

Artina McCain: Right?

Andrea McAlister: Even though you didn’t say no initially. But they convinced you that you really should do this. Because just being able to experience things other than Clementi—I mean, I know those are all important foundational—you know, you learn a lot of foundational skills through the standard repertoire. But this is such important music to pass along to kids who are growing up now and getting excited about playing the piano and these pieces are so exciting to play.

Artina McCain: Yeah, and familiar hopefully to many too.

If you enjoyed this excerpt from Piano Inspires Podcast’s latest episode, listen to the entire episode with Artina McCain on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or our website!

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Piano Teaching through the Lens of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
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Piano Inspires Podcast: Robert Weirich

Written By Robert Weirich, Nicholas Phillips

To celebrate the latest episode of Piano Inspires Podcast featuring Robert Weirich we are sharing an excerpted transcript of his conversation with Nicholas Phillips. Want to learn more about Weirich? Check out the latest installment of the Piano Inspires Podcast. To learn more, visit pianoinspires.com. Listen to our latest episode with Weirich on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or our website!

Nicholas Phillips: I know that your path in music and your career in academia took several turns along the way. Can you talk a little bit about the process of making hard decisions because they can ultimately lead to other really enriching opportunities?

Robert Weirich: Well, yes. The problem with making hard decisions is you don’t know what the result will be; you don’t know what the future will be. When you make a decision, you simply have to live with what ever comes next. My very first teaching job—well, actually, before I had my first teaching job, I was a student at Yale, around New York City a lot. I had some connections there. I really debated whether to stay there in the New York area and try to make it as a soloist. But instead, I took the Tulane job, and the rest is history, as it were. I ended up really loving teaching. Even at Tulane, I—two years later, I had an offer to teach at Northwestern. It was really hard to make that decision even though it was a prestigious jump in the job. I really loved New Orleans, and I still miss it. So you just never know what you’re going to come up with. I think it is proof of that saying—what is it? If you’re dealt lemons, make lemonade. So you just have to make lemonade all the time, whatever it is.

NP: In the book, you talks a lot about how learning is something that begins at a certain point, but never really ends, and it’s an important point for us all to remember, don’t you think?

RW: Yeah, for sure. I think the thing about learning—you do want to learn new things, but I think it’s also important to learn more deeply the things you already know. There’s a chapter in the book about the spiral curriculum, which is a term coined by Jerome Bruner, an educational psychologist. The idea is that in learning anything, you learn very basic things first, and then as the learning continues, it’s like you’re on a spiral up, and you keep coming back to those things that you learned at the lower level, and then you go a little higher and higher and higher. So you are in fact, learning those basics more deeply every time. I just think that’s a good thing to keep in mind.

Robert Weirich with his former student, Allison Shinnick Keep, at NCKP 2023: The Piano Conference.

NP: It’s really important for us to continue to be open to new experiences, while also enriching previously learned things.

If you enjoyed this excerpt from Piano Inspires Podcast’s latest episode, listen to the entire episode with Robert Weirich on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or our website!

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Recollections by Robert Weirich
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Piano Inspires Podcast: Sara Davis Buechner

Written By Craig Sale, Sara Davis Buechner

To celebrate the latest episode of Piano Inspires Podcast featuring Sara Davis Buechner, we are sharing an excerpted transcript of her conversation with Craig Sale. Want to learn more about Buechner? Check out the latest installment of the Piano Inspires Podcast. To learn more, visit pianoinspires.com. Listen to our latest episode with Buechner on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or our website!

Connor Chee, Ann DuHamel, Leah Claiborne, and Sara Davis Buechner after their NCKP 2023: The Piano Conference PEDx presentations.

Sara Davis Buechner: Katie Welch’s first piano lesson: she came in with a big frown on her face. I said, “Are you in a bad mood?” She says, “Yeah!” I said, “Why are you in a bad mood?” “I hate the piano!” I said, “So do I! You know, I hate the piano a lot. Let’s beat it up.” I said, “Sit here with me.” And we just bam, bam, bam [demonstrates hitting surface]. We hit the keys of the piano until she got tired. I just let her do that until she [panting out of breath]. And then I said, “Okay, now are you tired of hitting the piano?” And she said, “Yeah.” I said, “Let me show you how the piano can maybe be your friend.” I played a beautiful Chopin nocturne with little stars. “Oh, that’s really nice.”

Anyway, three years later, she came in for her last lesson. She didn’t know it was her last lesson when it was done. I said, “Katie, I have to tell you something. I’m, I’m—I won’t be your piano teacher next year. I’m moving to the city of Vancouver. I’m joining a college faculty there.” And she said, “Where’s Vancouver?” And I drew a little map for her and I showed her. She burst out crying. I said, “Why are you crying? What’s the upset?” You know? She said, “I love the piano.”

Craig Sale: Oh!

SDB: It’s the best teaching job I ever did. You know? Because, you know, it’s interesting. I mean, I love my college students, of course. However, they’re at an age where they have specific goals in mind, they have to pass the jury, they’re entering a competition, they’re auditioning for a job. They need this skill or that skill, you know. It’s very goal oriented. With young children, I’m very aware that I don’t know what their goals are, they don’t know what their goals are. They’re unformed and the main thing is that you want to prepare them that if they do decide to be a teacher of music, to be a choir director, to be an accompanist, to be a teacher of solfège, you know, to be a jazz band leader, whatever, that they have a very, very positive feeling about it.

If you enjoyed this excerpt from Piano Inspires Podcast’s latest episode, listen to the entire episode with Sara Davis Buechner on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or our website!

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LIVING IN TECHNICOLOR—An Interview with Sarah Davis Buechner

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Piano Inspires Podcast: Angelin Chang

Written By Angelin Chang, Andrea Mcalister

To celebrate the latest episode of Piano Inspires Podcast featuring Angelin Chang we are sharing an excerpted transcript of his conversation with Andrea McAlister. Want to learn more about Chang? Check out the latest installment of the Piano Inspires Podcast. To learn more, visit pianoinspires.com. Listen to our latest episode with Chang on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or our website!

A post-concert photo from NCKP 2023: The Piano Conference featuring (from left to right): Tony Caramia, Kairy Koshoeva, Andrew Cooperstock, Nicholas Phillips, Susanna Garcia, William Chapman Nyaho, Artina McCain, Jeremy Siskind, and Angelin Chang.

Andrea McAlister: I know we’ve talked a lot about music in the world and how we can make a change. I want to look forward now. We’re at this time where there is a lot of division and there is a lot of disagreement, and there’s a lot of tension in many places. Fortunately, we’re experiencing the opposite of that this week in this environment that we’re currently in, as we are all surrounded by pianists and teachers. We’re feeling it. How do we carry this out into the world? What does it look like? Let’s say, you know, if we fast forward ten years and say, “How has music transformed the world? How can we take this message out and really make a difference?” I know, we might think that—well just in my small little community, I can do a little bit. How does that change the world?

Angelin Chang: Planting the seeds does change the world. For me, I think the message is also understanding that the arts—music—is for everyone. I mean, a lot of times we’re talking about classical music—highbrow music—but, where did it originate? It wasn’t highbrow, we made it highbrow, so to speak. Nothing wrong with highbrow or lowbrow, or medium brow. You know? It’s for everyone. That’s one of the things I learned at the GRAMMYs too, because when I was nominated, I felt like, “I’m going to be a fish out of water here being a classical musician,” because all I knew was what I saw on primetime TV. But even then, going there, it was a community. Mutual respect all around for all genres. It wasn’t, “Oh, because you’re not pop you’re not hip.” It wasn’t that at all. It’s just that, you know, primetime TV, there’s just a small segment of what they could, you know, make money off of. Anyway, right, nothing wrong with that. Because those type of things would help fund things that were, you know, may need some more support? Did you know that the GRAMMYs is actually the largest fundraiser for all their activities, including a lot of great programs that help musicians in need, for example?

AM: That’s fabulous.

AC: Yeah, and we don’t see that, and not until I won, did I even know about some of these programs that were behind the scenes, like—oh, my gosh, there’s so much more. Just like there’s so much more here in our conference. Each individual brings so much, but, you know, the organizational part—to institute what we value in that sense that helps the next generation. Now with all the division and all that, I think partly it’s because there’s not this type of communication and understanding. So there’s the tendency for us to just be in our group that we feel safe and secure, and everything else out there is like, “No, no, don’t touch that.” Whereas I feel it’s the opposite that needs to happen. For example, when I went to Nepal and it’s like, “Okay, I’m very comfortable again now in this wonderful palace of a hotel and everything like this.” Yeah, it’s going beyond and actually noticing those things. And to be, “Hey, these are these are humans these are we can interact. We have something to benefit each other that can help make things better.” Or an understanding—it’s not that you have to agree with the other stuff, but at least understand or at least communicate. You can agree to disagree and still understand and have that common goal of making something for the better. Now, we can decide like, “Okay, we’ll try your way this time, try our way that time and see. Okay, then be objective.” I know it’s very difficult because a lot of times people don’t want to see that. I think part of it is taking off those blinders and just being open.

Even if you disagree with something like—how many times have you gone to a concert and it’s like, “Oh, I wouldn’t do it that way, I wouldn’t do that.” But you can’t deny that whatever they gave was like, “Wow, they worked on that. They made it special. They made it their own.” That’s what makes the world turn—embracing our uniqueness in that sense. And it’s great that we’re all different, but we’re all the same at the same time. Understanding that at the core, there’s certain things that we all want and that we all need. That feeling of security. There are a lot of people here where we’re changing the status quo feel very insecure. It’s not that necessarily I think that they’re feeling that, you know, they’re in the right, we’re in the wrong or just, they’re just wanting to hold power. Folks might lash out because they feel insecure, not because they feel powerful. I think it’s very important to understand some of the signs that we might interpret, aren’t necessarily what’s really going on. See what we can all do, to have that mutual understanding for world peace and human harmony.

AM: Just a small little thing we as musicians can, yeah—. I say it kind of facetiously but seriously, that music can do that as you are proving that day in and day out. We really thank you for all the work you have done and are doing to create that place that we all hope we can get to someday, but we’re also in it now. We’re also seeing how it’s happening.

AC: It’s happening.

AM: Music is that connector and it’s just beautiful.

If you enjoyed this excerpt from Piano Inspires Podcast’s latest episode, listen to the entire episode with Angelin Chang on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or our website!

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Dr. Andrea McAlister serves as Director of Digital Programming for the Frances Clark Center and a Senior Editor for Piano Magazine. Dr. McAlister is Professor of Piano Pedagogy at Oberlin College and a member of the Yamaha Master Educator Collective.
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Piano Inspires Podcast: Chee-Hwa Tan

Written By Chee-Hwa Tan, Alejandro Cremaschi

To celebrate the latest episode of Piano Inspires Podcast featuring Chee-Hwa Tan, we are sharing an excerpted transcript of her conversation with Alejandro Cremaschi. Want to learn more about Tan? Check out the latest installment of the Piano Inspires Podcast. To learn more, visit pianoinspires.com. Listen to our latest episode with Tan on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or our website!

Chee-Hwa Tan at the piano.

Alejandro Cremaschi: Where are you seeing our field going now? What’s your impression? Are you thinking about these things: you know, the classical music making, piano playing? Where are we, and where are we going? What do you see in the future?

Chee-Hwa Tan: I think that music will always be relevant. We all need that. I mean, we have this craving for beauty. Now, I think if we all insist on our little boxes, then we look within that box and say, “well, where’s it going?” I can’t answer that. I think as long as we focus—as far as in piano and teaching—if we keep reminding ourselves, asking ourselves, like, during the pandemic, I thought we should be asking, what do they need? What does this student need right now? My grad students—everything has shut down. How about I just throw out my course and do a different—what do they need? Do they need all this content and information? You know what I’m saying?

Or do they need to connect because they’re looking rather depressed across that Zoom screen, you know, in their apartments. So I think that if we think back to what Frances Clark said, you know, that first you teach the student. And I say, I reword that, first you see the person, you see the person, and that person can make music, and that person could feel like an artist. If they feel a little bit like an artist, maybe not to the level of our classical standards, but they feel a bit like an artist, they are going to be hooked on music for the rest of their lives, and they will be supporters of the arts one day, or they may be innovative in their music. So I’ve had to just move out of that box a little bit and I was definitely in that box. I mean, you know, it’s been a continued growth process. I think that music, as long as we keep—we don’t become segregated or elite, you know, and I don’t say lower the standard you know—but value someone’s music making. Find something, you know, that’s at least something that’s special. Try to look at it that way because otherwise we kill our own joy.

AC: Right?

CHT: I was killing my own joy sitting there and noticing everything, you know, when that’s not the way it ever was anyway, you know? Now we are in a world of super edits. Right? Yeah, so I think there’s great hope for music. I think we just need to flex with it. We don’t have to lower our standards, we just need to open our vision, a perspective to the bigger picture. You know, ask us for that gift to be able to see the bigger picture and see people first, because people matter. I tell my graduate students that—as I was leaving DU—that people matter more than the product. People matter more. That’s what you leave behind: the people and the relationships.

If you enjoyed this excerpt from Piano Inspires Podcast’s latest episode, listen to the entire episode with Chee-Hwa Tan on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or our website!

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Spring 2022: Create to Motivate: Using Repertoire to Incorporate Creativity in Lessons
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Piano Inspires Podcast: Susanna Garcia

Written By Luis Sanchez, Susanna Garcia

To celebrate the latest episode of Piano Inspires Podcast featuring Susanna Garcia we are sharing an excerpted transcript of her conversation with Luis Sanchez. Want to learn more about Garcia? Check out the latest installment of the Piano Inspires Podcast. To learn more, visit pianoinspires.com. Listen to our latest episode with Chee on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or our website!

Susanna Garcia and William Chapman Nyaho after their performance at NCKP 2023: The Piano Conference.

Luis Sanchez: So let’s fast forward to Susie today. You’re involved in so many wonderful things with eNovativePiano, with your work with Nyaho. How are you—or your work—changing our world?

Susanna Garcia: Well, it helps to be retired from your academic job.

LS: I was wondering that!

SG: When you’re working a full-time academic job, your commitment is to that job. I mean, that’s your obligation, that’s your responsibility. Your work should be about your students, nurturing them, giving them what they need to be successful in whatever they do, whether it’s music, or they change their majors and go to psychology. You still are there to nurture that. You’re helping to build the school, to build the reputation of the school, to support your colleagues. The school that I retired from—the University of Louisiana at Lafayette—that music school has a phenomenally collegial and supportive culture, which is one reason I stayed there my whole career, because I could thrive. The faculty, the middle administration, the upper administration, I just had support all the time, and you don’t hear that said very much.

LS: It’s true, yeah.

SG: And so it was a good place to work, but all my efforts really were on my obligations to the students, and frankly, building my resume. As a young professor, I had to have resume items. I always chose projects that I was interested in, I never did anything just to do it, you know, just for the resume item. So, when I retired in 2021, in May, I thought I had all the time in the world to take on all these projects. So I took on kind of a lot of projects.

SG: I think I’ll start with the eNovativePiano for just a second because it is a business, it’s a group piano multimedia curriculum. It’s a business that grew out of two teachers that wanted to improve their students’ experiences. Group piano is hard. It’s hard for college music majors because they have to get proficiency in something fast that they may have had no experience in. And that’s a big ask. We were not satisfied with the progress our students were making towards proficiency. I mean, they could pass their proficiency, but we didn’t really feel like they were really proficient, that they could leave the group piano classroom and use piano as a tool professionally as needed.

LS: Which is the goal, right?

SG: Which is the goal. The goal isn’t the proficiency. The goal is you are the band director or choir director you need to plunk out parts. You need to be able to read a score, you need to—maybe you are a music therapist, and you need some keyboard skills. You need these skills. So, we just started making materials that we thought—videos and audio tracks—that we thought would help. This wasn’t about starting a business. It’s nothing about the business. We started and we would post them on our LMS. And we just started noticing real progress, quick, and also a much higher motivation level. Students were having a sense of fun. You know, they were they’re enjoying the process, and they were more engaged. So we took these first five videos that we made to a conference, and people said, “Where can I get these videos?” So we thought, okay, well, maybe we should commercialize it. So we did. And it’s been a long process, but that’s eNovativePiano. It really grew out of a need to serve our students. To me serving your students is changing the world. I mean, I think that’s, we have to remember that that’s what we’re doing. If I’m creating more ease, for someone who’s going to be a music professional to go out and do a better job more easily, I see that as changing the world. That’s changing the world like one-by-one, which is important, of course. But then the other projects—and this is why I love working with The Frances Clark Center, because The Frances Clark Center has a really global vision. The Frances Clark Center wants to make big changes, you know. So it’s great to be doing the one-to-one change, but I also like being associated with an organization that’s trying to do things in a bigger way.

SG: So my other current project is researching the music of Thomas Henderson Kerr, Jr. who, if you don’t know his name, when you’re listening to this podcast, I hope you will in another year. So briefly, Thomas Henderson Kerr, Jr. was an African American composer who died in the 1980s. He was a professor at Howard University for mostly his whole career. Well, he composed a lot of pieces, piano works, choral works, organ works—he was also an organist. None of his piano works—and very few, just maybe two of his organ works are appearing in anthologies—but none of his piano works have been published. All his music and his papers are in fourteen boxes in the Schomburg Center for Black Cultural Studies in New York City.

SG: The story of how I came to be interested in Thomas Kerr is too long to tell, but a manuscript came to Nyaho’s and my inboxes from somebody who had a 20,000 times Xerox version of this two-piano piece. And so we learned it and we loved it. It’s on our latest CD, but we’ve been touring with it, and it’s a concert scherzo, a set of variations based on the Negro spiritual, “Didn’t my Lord Deliver Daniel?” It’s a fantastic piece, it’s a fantastic piece. Where has it been? It was written in 1940! And it’s in a box. The crime here to me is that if there hadn’t been this accidental email, this piece would be completely forgotten history.

SG: So this is how I feel like I’m trying to change the world anyway. I’m not just bringing this piece to light, but with The Frances Clark Center, who is going to publish this piece, we’re going to also publish two more of his piano works. That’s, to me, a huge accomplishment, but what I want to inspire others to do is to understand that there are boxes like this, in every archive, in every library all over the world waiting for to be discovered. And you know, and there’s reasons this music wasn’t published, which I’m not going to go into, and I’m not even sure what the reasons are—I can just kind of guess. But I don’t know for sure. But I’m going to promise you that there are going to be dozens, if not hundreds, of African American composers whose music has never been published. This is why history is important, and this is why honesty about history is important. I do think it’s important to know why the music wasn’t published. I’m just not able to say for sure why that was. But I think that’s part of the research process. I hope, if you’re a young pianist, or young scholar, hearing this podcast and and looking for a topic for your doctoral work—

LS: To direct your attention to.

SG: You know, just going into these libraries and cataloging what’s in there for the world to see, would be changing the world and being truthful and honest about music history, and for African Americans, that experience in the United States. I think that history is a little bit under attack right now, and I’m going to be the first one to say, history is what keeps us moving forward, as a people, as a culture, as Americans. History is what keeps us grounded and tied to our past, and gives us the ability to have a future that is equitable.

If you enjoyed this excerpt from Piano Inspires Podcast’s latest episode, listen to the entire episode with Susanna Garcia on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or our website!

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Piano Inspires Podcast: An Interview with Connor Chee

Written By Craig Sale, Connor Chee

To celebrate the latest episode of Piano Inspires Podcast featuring Connor Chee we are sharing an excerpted transcript of his conversation with Craig Sale. Want to learn more about Chee? Check out the latest installment of the Piano Inspires Podcast. To learn more, visit pianoinspires.com. Listen to our latest episode with Chee on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or our website!

Connor Chee, Ann DuHamel, Leah Claiborne, and Sara Davis Buechner after their NCKP 2023: The Piano Conference PEDx presentations.

Craig Sale: Which brings me to a project, which I’m familiar with. It is an exciting one with the Frances Clark Center. You are, along with Renata Yazzie, leading a project of commissioned works by Indigenous composers for young piano students or for elementary students. We’ve been working on the project together, but one thing we haven’t talked about is what does this project mean to you? What do you hope to achieve by it, but, also on a more personal level, what meaning does that hold for you?

Connor Chee: I think it’s important on so many levels. I think the first is the level of communication, because music is a great way to communicate and to foster curiosity. That’s something that with my music I tried to do and I’m always surprised at the conversations that open up with other cultures and things that I learned about other people because they found something in the music that relates to Diné culture that also relates to some aspect of their unique background. Those are the conversations that are so important to really be able to celebrate the diversity and what makes everybody unique and what they can bring to the table. Specifically in the Indigenous communities, I think it’s important because it shows possibility. They’re seeing things that are placed in front of them that they can say, “Hey, maybe I want to do this someday. Maybe I want to be a composer. Maybe I want to play piano.” You know, these are things that are—there’s a place for us, and it’s important for students to see that that there is a place for them if they want to pursue music or whatever avenue it is. That wasn’t the case because in the past, you know, the representation was so flawed, and it wasn’t really a represent quotation that was more of a mockery, yeah, that had, you know, a negative impact.

CS: Representation that’s not a cartoon.

CC: Right?

CS: Something that they can actually relate to.

If you enjoyed this excerpt from Piano Inspires Podcast’s latest episode, listen to the entire episode with Connor Chee on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or our website!

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Piano Inspires Podcast: An Interview with Vanessa Cornett

Written By Vanessa Cornett, Alejandro Cremaschi

To celebrate the latest episode of Piano Inspires Podcast featuring Vanessa Cornett, we are sharing an excerpted transcript of her conversation with Alejandro Cremaschi. Want to learn more about Cornett? Check out the latest installment of the Piano Inspires Podcast. To learn more, visit pianoinspires.com. Listen to our latest episode with Cornett on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or our website!

Vanessa Cornett at NCKP 2023: The Piano Conference.

Alejandro Cremaschi: It’s interesting because we are talking about anxiety, but there’s this other side of what you do, which is about peak performance and using sports psychology tools to help. I think in some ways they are related, right? Peak performance and anxiety?


Vanessa Cornett: They are! This is going to be an oversimplification, but I think musicians are behind athletes significantly. I think elite athletes and their coaches and their sports psychologists have understood for many decades, that if you train the mind for peak performance, that helps automatically with the anxiety because you’re taking a proactive approach. You’re thinking, “How do I win? How do I be the best? How do I get the gold?” You have practiced all of these internal and external things to get there. Okay, what do musicians do? We spend hours and hours training the body in our practice room and when we feel anxious, first of all, it feels wrong. “I shouldn’t be feeling this, this, clearly, I’m doing something wrong.” Then what we do as musicians is we tend to take a reactive approach: “Oh, you have this problem. Let’s see how we can help you fix this problem and get over it.” What I tell my students, is if you go into a bookstore or search on Amazon for “performance anxiety management techniques for top athletes,” “stage fright for football players,” you don’t find those books. You don’t find—Michael Phelps is not writing a book on: “I was Scared and Here’s How I Got Over It.” Because all of the literature is: “What can I do to be the best? What can I do to put my mind in the game where it needs to be?” I really believe—and again, it’s an oversimplification, because music and sports aren’t the same—but if we musicians would take a more proactive approach, if we would help our students and ourselves think differently, or pay attention to our mental processes, I don’t think performance anxiety would go away but I think we would know how to proactively sort of deal with it and it wouldn’t be weird, it would be normal. It would be you know that adrenaline when we feel scared—that’s the same adrenaline when we’re having a peak performance experience. I tell my students, no world record at the Olympics was ever broken except in front of an audience. Those are when the world records are broken because there’s so much adrenaline and it’s funneled in a certain way, right? So why can’t musicians take that adrenaline and instead of recognizing it as dread—”I’m going to die!”—why can’t we get our mind in a place where we use that as fuel as best we can to have what we would call a peak performance experience?

If you enjoyed this excerpt from Piano Inspires Podcast’s latest episode, listen to the entire episode with Vanessa Cornett on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or our website!

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Piano Inspires Podcast: An Interview with William Chapman Nyaho

Written By Jennifer Snow, William Chapman Nyaho

To celebrate the latest episode of Piano Inspires Podcast featuring William Chapman Nyaho, we are sharing an excerpted transcript of his conversation with Jennifer Snow. Want to learn more about Nyaho? Check out the latest installment of the Piano Inspires Podcast. To learn more, visit pianoinspires.com. Listen to our latest episode with Nyaho on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or our website!

Susanna Garcia and William Chapman Nyaho after their performance at NCKP 2023: The Piano Conference.

Jennifer Snow: I’d love for you to talk a little bit about how the collection [Piano Music of Africa and the African Diaspora, five volumes, Oxford University Press] came about, and how that all connected on that wonderful theme of generosity and service. 

William Chapman Nyaho: Well, yeah, so that particular project started in 2001. I was doing a session for MTNA in Cincinnati and I had taken a leave of absence from the university that I was at in Louisiana. I was on Vashon Island in Washington. 

JS: Lovely!

WCN: And I had, you know, been able to amass all these scores, out of print or manuscripts, of composers of African descent. So I did a presentation “Into Africa: Advocating Piano Music of Africa and the African Diaspora.” Luckily, Oxford University Press was at my presentation, and so they took me on, and that’s how it all started up in 2000. No it was 2002.

JS: How have you seen things change since 2002 when you published that extraordinary collection?

WCN: Honestly, I really think things have really started happening. Like, the concert last night Piano Stories [On Stage]. Somebody was saying, “Just look at the repertoire. I think this is the new norm.” 

JS: Right? 

WCN: You know it wasn’t, you know—

JS: Special presentation on this repertoire, it was just part of the canon.

WCN: It was just—exactly. Yeah, it’s part of the canon, no longer the “old faithfuls.” You know, yes, we did have Bach and that was just phenomenal. But, you know, it just made everything so important and just as special as Bach, you know. So I really see there’s been a huge change since I would say the publications, but probably even more so, during the time that we were locked up with COVID and we saw the death of George Floyd. You know, I mean, that was, I think—when people had to see that played over and over and over again—I think it was like a moment where, “Oh, wait a minute. Let’s stop and think about this.” You know.

JS: And the juxtaposition of, as a world we’re all together facing this horrible thing, and then something so horrific— 

WCN: Horrific.

JS: It was, like the extreme juxtaposition of what we thought we were being as a human race, and what we are.

WCN: Exactly, you know, so I really think—and so, luckily, I would say, maybe those who had these books for several years, and were working or teaching them suddenly realized how important the work was. And for people to start understanding that, yes, we are diverse, and we need to celebrate our diversity, and promote equity and create access. And so it’s just been wonderful hearing Korean piano music, hearing music by, you know, people from the Philippines, you know, all this amazing music is now getting—people are hearing it.

JS: And it’s that kind of connection you speak about of, if you play the music from my country, you begin to understand who I am. 

WCN: It’s correct. 

JS: Cultural ambassadorship through music.

If you enjoyed this excerpt from Piano Inspires Podcast’s latest episode, listen to the entire episode with Nyaho on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or our website! Hear more from Nyaho at the 2024 Summer Intensive Seminar: An International Exploration of Piano Teaching Literature. Learn more here.

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