News

Q&A with Marvin Blickenstaff: Part One

Written By Marvin Blickenstaff

We would like to thank Marvin Blickenstaff for answering these questions regarding his approach to piano pedagogy. Want to learn more about Marvin’s teaching? The Frances Clark Center recently published his book Inspired Piano Teaching. This fall 2024, we are excited to announce that Marvin and The Frances Clark Center will host a virtual book club using Marvin’s book, allowing participants to discover and reflect on their pedagogical practices in transformative ways. Register for the book club and other events here.

I love your technique videos on PianoInspires.com! I use your exercises with all of my students. My question is: how do you encourage students to spend so much of their practice time on technical skills? How do you teach them to stay focused and to enjoy the process?

I try to point out to my students that one of the issues that we face when we’re studying piano is developing the technique that is necessary to play the repertoire at hand. And with that, I place a great deal of emphasis in my lessons on warmups. Athletes warm up, dancers warm up, and piano students warm up. The bottom line of warming up is to stimulate blood circulation in the playing mechanism—the hands and the arms. Along with that, I have two important things that I try to stress with all my students and illustrate in their warm ups: stretching and rotations. They are such an emphasis in my work with my students that I joke with them that I’m sure that when I die, they will have inscribed on my gravestone, “Here lies piano teacher Marvin Blickenstaff. May he stretch and rotate in peace.” 

So I think warm ups are very important. It might be possible to over-emphasize technique and the warm up in lessons, but what we’re doing is preparing the student for the rest of their piano life. So I don’t apologize very much for having six or seven different technical exercises that they are to practice as part of their work every day. 

In order to get students invested in their work on technique I try to be very, very aware of pointing out how much their hand is improving, how much the sound is improving, and how much their coordination skills are improving so that they can see that the technique work is paying off. 

In summary, every minute that we spend in the lesson on technical exercises, and every minute that the students spend at home on technical exercises, ultimately pays off. Now, that’s not as much fun as learning a new piece or playing a recital piece, but you can’t play your pieces effectively if you don’t have enough technique. And I try to emphasize to my students that growth in piano playing is directly related to how you start to practice every afternoon.

Marvin celebrating his student

What is the first thing you say to a new student?

I think it’s important for piano students to hear from a piano teacher that they feel privileged to have this relationship and this experience of learning about music together. You’ll have your own words to communicate that. But, it’s not that I’m the big authority, you’re the little student, and you have to do exactly what I tell you to. Rather, it’s very important for piano teachers to cultivate the attitude that this is a partnership and we’re working together to make beautiful music. 

Additionally, we have to hook our students into the excitement of playing the piano. How? Through sound. That’s why when students come for their first lesson, I try to play a few bars of different kinds of pieces, because it’s so interesting for a student to hear such contrasting sounds. And I say, “I am so glad that we have this opportunity to learn how to play the piano together. We’ll learn quiet pieces, we’ll learn fast pieces. We’ll learn hopping and jumping pieces, and we’ll learn dancing pieces.” Hook the student on sound and they will be excited to learn.

Have you ever struggled with students who weren’t interested in taking piano lessons but had parents who signed them up anyway? How do you get that student excited about music learning?

Once again, I would say you hook the student on sound. And you pull out all of your pupil saver pieces—the pieces that are kind of easy to learn, but have a great sound to them. Richard Chronister was a colleague of Frances Clark and Louise Goss, founder of Keyboard Companion and the National Conference on Piano Pedagogy (now NCKP: The Piano Conference), and a major force of 20th-century piano pedagogy. He always used to say that piano students come to us for one reason only: to play exciting sounds at the keyboard. I try to really ingest that into my pedagogical being. Why are students here? They want to play exciting sound, whether it’s quiet, loud, fast, or slow. 

“I think it’s important for piano students to hear from a piano teacher that they feel privileged to have this relationship and this experience of learning about music together.”

There are two files of pieces that I would urge you to start in your studio. One is “beautiful pieces,” and the other is “pupil savers” (a term from Louise Bianchi in Texas). Pupil savers are pieces that are easy to learn, but have great sound. 

So, what do you do with a disinterested student? You hook them with the repertoire. And you don’t work so much on technical exercises. Instead, you work on beautiful pieces (pupil savers, perhaps) that they will really enjoy. 

What is a favorite performance memory?

Last summer I played a recital at Goshen College where I taught for 20 years in Indiana. That was really well-tested repertoire and I had a wonderful piano to play on. I thought all during that recital, “What a privilege to play this music on this piano for old friends.” Years ago, I was invited to play a concerto with the North Carolina symphony. It was not a very good choice, but I decided that I would learn the Samuel Barber Concerto for Piano. That’s a tough tune. That performance is one of my least favorite memories of a performance, because it was really a rough performance and the orchestra and I kind of fought our way to the end. But actually, four nights later, I played the same concerto, same orchestra, in my hometown in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, and it went really well. And it was almost like I had to go through the fires of hell in order to reach Nirvana. And it was just such fun to play the Barber concerto with an orchestra. So we have different experiences with performances, but we go on.

I have a student who really struggles with memorizing music. We have tried all kinds of exercises, tips, and tricks, but they are quite discouraged despite my encouragement. What advice would you give them… and me?

The issue boils down to the fact that students think that memory is just to train the fingers in muscle memory, and there’s a big missing link there. The students who rely solely on muscle memory do not have a mental concept of how the piece is constructed. So one of my goals for my students is to do more labeling and analysis. We piano teachers must do a much better and more thorough job of helping our students name what they play. If you can name what you play, you probably have it memorized. So for most students, if there’s a memory issue, I think it’s because they don’t know what they’re playing. 

When my students are memorizing pieces, we establish three memory checkpoints on each page. The goal is that they can start cold at any number. Go back to number two, jump ahead to number five. And boy, if you can start your piece at all those memory checkpoints, you have your piece very well memorized. 

I would also say that along with the memory checkpoints, you should be able to articulate the reason that a spot is a memory checkpoint (such as, that’s where you play the D major chord in your left hand).

Marvin with Dr. Sara Ernst at NCKP 2019

So I think that labels and memory checkpoints are really the answer for memory problems. The great American pianist Josef Hoffman said that there are actually four ways to practice a piece. One way is that you play the piece at the piano looking carefully at the score. Then, you play your piece at the piano without the score (from memory). The third way to practice a piece is to sit away from the piano with the music in your hand, looking at the score and hearing the music. And the fourth way– which I think is just an incredible memory check– is to sit away from the piano, close your eyes, and see your hands playing the piece on the keyboard. It’s so helpful. Actually, it’s my favorite way of checking memory when I’m getting ready for a performance. And when I’m falling asleep at night!

Coming soon: Q&A with Marvin Blickenstaff: Part 2 where Marvin answers more of your questions!

The Marvin Blickenstaff Institute for Teaching Excellence

In 2023, the Frances Clark Center established the Marvin Blickenstaff Institute for Teaching Excellence in honor of his legacy as a pedagogue. This division of The Frances Clark Center encompasses inclusive teaching programs, teacher education, courses, performance, advocacy, publications, research, and resources that support excellence in piano teaching and learning. To learn more about the Institute, please visit this page.

OTHER RESOURCE YOU MIGHT ENJOY:

Back to Discovery Page

What is a Good Piano Sound and How Do You Get it?

Written By William Fried

We would like to thank William Fried for this insightful article on making a beautiful sound at the piano. Want to learn more about tone production? Check out the latest issue of Piano Magazine. Our new summer issue can be found by clicking here.

“You get a terrible sound at the piano, William. Just terrible.” So spoke my teacher in college, in an admonition I would hear many times over four years. A wonderful person and infinitely generous, but she did not mince words.

“Thanks a lot, Arlene,” I muttered under my breath, before trying the passage again.

She was right, of course. I did get a terrible sound at the piano. I could hear it. Or rather, I could hear the difference when compared with the polished sound in recordings. Why didn’t my Mozart sparkle like that? My playing sounded dull and heavy and forced.

There were reasons, no doubt. Bad technique, certainly. Rapid teenage growth spurts that led to Glenn Gould-esque hunching over the keyboard didn’t help. Nor did the shallow-actioned and unresponsive Kimball baby grand that had been my instrument since childhood. But accurate accounting of blame wasn’t going to solve my problem, and there I was: a college freshman hacking and slashing my way through Chopin and Liszt. And as I progressed, I began to suspect that this was the ceiling holding me back, the main cause of disappointments in competitions and auditions.

And in this, my teacher may have been out of her element. A former child prodigy herself, everything came easy to her. It’s simple: you just listen and hear it and fix it. What’s this kid’s problem? Or maybe she did have the solution and I wasn’t ready to hear it. It’s hard to know with these things.

When I did finally begin to address this problem, help came in the form of a relatively late learner—my teacher in graduate school had initially been a composer before switching to playing the piano full time. Maybe there is something to this. I remember Irish pianist and pedagogue John O’Conor once saying in a masterclass that he attributed his success as a teacher to his figuring things out so late in life. He could still recall the process of learning; it hadn’t happened when he was too young to remember.

Whatever the reason, upon hearing my playing, this new teacher knew exactly what I needed. He prescribed a regimen he credited to his own teacher, the Brazilian pedagogue William Daghlian: Tausig exercises to be practiced slowly, attentive to physical gesture and the conditioning of good habits, with an ear always to the resulting sound. I became aware of things, trivially simple things, that I had previously never noticed. Like the importance of letting go of a note (he called these “releases”) at the very moment of the next so that there’s no gap or overlap between them. Easy to do if you know to do it. And the very process—hearing and correcting little things—became empowering in itself. The more I heard, the more I demanded from my fingers, which found a way to deliver and allow me to hear more and insist on more—a virtuous cycle. And my sound, once this intractable bugbear, began to improve, gradually but noticeably, and it was narcotic—like getting the keys to the kingdom. Like the character in Forrest Gump who, once he sheds his crutches, determines to run everywhere, I was resolved to play with sound. Debussy and others like him became my exclusive focus for quite a while. In retrospect, I might have benefitted from hearing, like Horatio, that there were more things in heaven and earth than dreamt of in my new philosophy, but honestly, I’m not sure I would have listened. That which has eluded us the longest, once we finally attain it, we value above all other things.

We hope you enjoyed this excerpt from William Fried’s article “What is a Good Piano Sound and How Do You Get it?” To read the full article, please click here.

MORE ON TONE PRODUCTION

Not yet a subscriber? Join for only $7.99/mo or $36/yr.
What is a Good Piano Sound and How Do You Get it?
NOTES
  1. Harvard Medical School. “A Brief History of Artificial Intelligence.” Harvard University. Last modified September 28, 2017. sitn.hms.harvard.edu/flash/2017/history-artificial-intelligence/.
  2. Microsoft. “Workshop: Interact with OpenAI Models.” Microsoft. microsoft.github.io/Workshop-Interact-with-OpenAI-models/llms/.
  3. OpenAI. “ChatGPT: Conversational AI developed by OpenAI.” OpenAI. openai.com/chatgpt.
Back to Discovery Page

A Tribute to Gary Ingle

Written By Jennifer Snow
by Jennifer Snow

Published in Piano Magazine, Summer 2024 Issue

Leadership is a term that is frequently used. A quick google search reveals a range of characteristics, terminology, and definitions of success. The truth of effective leadership lies in the person—an individual who impacts a profession, motivates and inspires, builds community, navigates change, directs through crisis, builds connections, and creates new paths and resources for the future. In our field, Dr. Gary Ingle has exemplified inspired leadership for over twenty-eight years at the helm of the Music Teachers National Association (MTNA). This summer, Dr. Ingle will complete his tenure as CEO and Executive Director of MTNA. Gary, as he is known to most of us, has been a long standing friend and partner with the Center. Because of his expert leadership, we have benefited for decades from our rewarding collaboration with MTNA. Our founders, Frances Clark and Louise Goss, were passionate members of MTNA and worked with Gary to support piano teachers across the country. Our continued close relationship with Gary and MTNA has been one of the most important relationships for the Center and our shared, purposeful work.

As a leader in the profession, Dr. Gary Ingle has dedicated himself to advancing music education globally. The list of boards and associations he has served is broadly international and extensive. In his MTNA role, he worked tirelessly to advocate for the profession and actively built new networks. His vision propelled MTNA and the profession at large to be more broadly engaged. The long list of MTNA initiatives and programs developed under Gary’s leadership speaks to his creativity, collaborative approach, and service to all. As the largest and most influential organization in our field, MTNA leads and supports teachers across the country, as well as non-profit organizations like the Frances Clark Center and the larger music education industry.

We are all very grateful to Gary for his stewardship in recent years through the pandemic. Through his tenacious leadership, the profession remained resilient and relevant. We weathered the difficult times together as a community because MTNA continued to lead and inspire.

In addition to MTNA program advancement, Gary also led new opportunities through the creation of grants, scholarships, partnerships, and awards. Through tireless advocacy, Gary raised awareness and funds to support the future of the profession and elevate the contributions of many. For us at the Frances Clark Center, The MTNA Frances Clark Keyboard Pedagogy Award was established through a bequest to MTNA from Frances Clark. Throughout Gary’s leadership, the Center has worked closely with MTNA to recognize innovative new contributions to the field of piano education.

The steadfast vision for MTNA, passionate advocacy for music educators, tireless dedication, service to the community, and genuine care for all of us, make Dr. Gary Ingle one of the most transformative leaders in our history. His commitment to emerging professionals is unparalleled. Many of us built, and continue to build, our careers with opportunities provided through MTNA. Throughout my own career development, I have always upheld Gary as a kind and effective leader that one aspires to emulate. Gary’s expert leadership fervently supported the membership and the board, allowing new ideas to advance and flourish.

On behalf of the Frances Clark Center Board of Trustees, Staff, and Center community, present and past, we congratulate our friend and colleague Dr. Gary Ingle on his outstanding and impactful leadership. We look forward to his next stages and know that he will continue to contribute to the field in transformative ways that benefit music educators and amplify the power of music. We also congratulate the new MTNA CEO, Brian Shepard, as we look forward to our future collaborations.

The Frances Clark Center to Receive $30,000 Grant from the National Endowment for the Arts

Written By Piano Inspires

PRESS RELEASE: 21 MAY 2024

The Frances Clark Center is pleased to announce it has been approved by the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) for a Grants for Arts Projects award of $30,000 to support its Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) efforts in music education publications. The NEA will award 1,135 Grants for Arts Projects awards totaling more than $37 million as part of its second round of fiscal year 2024 grants. 

“Projects to support diversity, equity, and inclusion in music education exemplify the creativity and care with which communities are telling their stories, creating connection, and responding to challenges and opportunities in their communities—all through the arts,” said NEA Chair Maria Rosario Jackson, PhD. “So many aspects of our communities such as cultural vitality, health and wellbeing, infrastructure, and the economy are advanced and improved through investments in art and design, and the National Endowment for the Arts is committed to ensuring people across the country benefit.”

“We are extremely grateful to the NEA for supporting these meaningful, creative projects in diversity, equity, and inclusion,” said Jennifer Snow, CEO and Executive Director of The Frances Clark Center. “We appreciate the work involved in the rigorous NEA review and adjudication process, and we are honored to be included with this year’s outstanding recipients. Piano education opens opportunities for broader cultural understanding, building stronger and more connected communities through music learning. Receiving the NEA grant makes it possible for us to advance these powerful initiatives this year.” 

The NEA Grants for Arts Project award will support The Frances Clark Center’s DEI efforts in three publication projects: the Indigenous Composer Project, Piano Magazine, and Piano Inspires Kids. The Indigenous Composer Project aims to create an inclusive collection of commissioned pedagogical piano music by Indigenous composers representing various Tribal Nations, celebrating Native American culture and fostering respect and appreciation in music education. The project will distribute up to 1,000 copies of the books at no cost to teachers, students, and schools in the Tribal Nations. 

Piano Inspires Kids centers on diverse and underrepresented musicians, offering inclusive and interactive content to educate students on musical cultures, composers, and styles. Piano Magazine emphasizes diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility, translating content into multiple languages to reflect and celebrate diverse communities and cultures.

For more information on other projects included in the NEA’s grant announcement, visit arts.gov/news.

For more information on each of The Frances Clark Center initiatives, visit:

A Tribute to Gary Ingle

Written By Jennifer Snow
by Jennifer Snow

Published in Piano Magazine, Summer 2024 Issue

Leadership is a term that is frequently used. A quick google search reveals a range of characteristics, terminology, and definitions of success. The truth of effective leadership lies in the person—an individual who impacts a profession, motivates and inspires, builds community, navigates change, directs through crisis, builds connections, and creates new paths and resources for the future. In our field, Dr. Gary Ingle has exemplified inspired leadership for over twenty-eight years at the helm of the Music Teachers National Association (MTNA). This summer, Dr. Ingle will complete his tenure as CEO and Executive Director of MTNA. Gary, as he is known to most of us, has been a long standing friend and partner with the Center. Because of his expert leadership, we have benefited for decades from our rewarding collaboration with MTNA. Our founders, Frances Clark and Louise Goss, were passionate members of MTNA and worked with Gary to support piano teachers across the country. Our continued close relationship with Gary and MTNA has been one of the most important relationships for the Center and our shared, purposeful work.

As a leader in the profession, Dr. Gary Ingle has dedicated himself to advancing music education globally. The list of boards and associations he has served is broadly international and extensive. In his MTNA role, he worked tirelessly to advocate for the profession and actively built new networks. His vision propelled MTNA and the profession at large to be more broadly engaged. The long list of MTNA initiatives and programs developed under Gary’s leadership speaks to his creativity, collaborative approach, and service to all. As the largest and most influential organization in our field, MTNA leads and supports teachers across the country, as well as non-profit organizations like the Frances Clark Center and the larger music education industry.

We are all very grateful to Gary for his stewardship in recent years through the pandemic. Through his tenacious leadership, the profession remained resilient and relevant. We weathered the difficult times together as a community because MTNA continued to lead and inspire.

In addition to MTNA program advancement, Gary also led new opportunities through the creation of grants, scholarships, partnerships, and awards. Through tireless advocacy, Gary raised awareness and funds to support the future of the profession and elevate the contributions of many. For us at the Frances Clark Center, The MTNA Frances Clark Keyboard Pedagogy Award was established through a bequest to MTNA from Frances Clark. Throughout Gary’s leadership, the Center has worked closely with MTNA to recognize innovative new contributions to the field of piano education.

The steadfast vision for MTNA, passionate advocacy for music educators, tireless dedication, service to the community, and genuine care for all of us, make Dr. Gary Ingle one of the most transformative leaders in our history. His commitment to emerging professionals is unparalleled. Many of us built, and continue to build, our careers with opportunities provided through MTNA. Throughout my own career development, I have always upheld Gary as a kind and effective leader that one aspires to emulate. Gary’s expert leadership fervently supported the membership and the board, allowing new ideas to advance and flourish.

On behalf of the Frances Clark Center Board of Trustees, Staff, and Center community, present and past, we congratulate our friend and colleague Dr. Gary Ingle on his outstanding and impactful leadership. We look forward to his next stages and know that he will continue to contribute to the field in transformative ways that benefit music educators and amplify the power of music.

Piano Inspires Podcast: Ann DuHamel

Written By Ann DuHamel, Pamela Pike

To celebrate the latest episode of the Piano Inspires Podcast featuring Ann DuHamel, we are sharing an excerpted transcript of her conversation with Pamela Pike. Want to learn more about DuHamel? Check out the latest installment of the Piano Inspires Podcast. To learn more, visit pianoinspires.com. Listen to our latest episode with DuHamel 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.

Ann DuHamel: Right around the time I was about to record that [Brahms and Transformation Project], there’s this explosion—what I perceive as an explosion—of news about climate change. Of course, I try to pay attention to the news and my husband is sort of a NPR junkie, so there’s news going on all the time in our house. But I just felt like what used to be an occasional news item, like once a month, twice a month, suddenly became like every week, every day, every hour, several times an hour. It just hit me! First, what I wanted to do was crawl under the covers and read Harry Potter. You know it’s like—you want to escape, because it is overwhelming, totally overwhelming.

Pamela Pike: But you didn’t. You used your music.

AD: I did. I mean, I was thinking, “What can I do?” Because I try to do things that are thoughtful about the environment. I live in a small town so I can walk to work. It takes me twenty-two minutes to walk to my office. I don’t walk when it’s -40 [degrees Fahrenheit] or when it’s icy, but I can walk to school. I walk to the grocery store; I walk to the gym; I walk to the movie theater. When I moved into my house, it was like all lawn, and every year I take out more lawn and put in more native plants. So, you know, trying to do things like that. I planted trees last year. We recycle; we compost. We do these things, but it didn’t feel like it was enough. I was thinking, “Well maybe I can do a musical program that’s music about climate change.” And this idea, like, actually, that idea gave me some hope. It gave me some courage. So this project evolved out of a feeling of despair and has become something—it actually feels, very significant to my life’s work.

PP: Oh it is! I mean, it is. It has to be. I’m glad it feels that way, because as an outsider, it certainly looks that way. And I think it speaks to the power of music. It shows how you can take something that doesn’t seem like it’s related to your professional life, but actually you can use it to change people’s minds and hearts and, hopefully, actions.

AD: That is my hope!

PP: Talk about programming a little bit. I think you’re masterful at your programming. I think too many people think, “I’m just going to program and not worry about my audience.” I don’t think you believe that.

AD: I don’t believe that. It’s really important to have works that your audience can engage with, and even if sometimes they challenge your audience, I think you want to have a balance. So, yes. When I’m programming—I mean I have many pieces in this project. Sixty—it’s going to be more than sixty because I’ve also started to commission some underrepresented composers. But thinking about, like, “How can I have a theme?” I have a program that I could do that’s all pieces related to water. I think about what narrative is happening when I do the program. “Where does it start? Where does it take people? Where does it end?” This year, I’ve been on sabbatical, and I haven’t been playing all sixty pieces when I’ve been playing because it’s like more than eight-and-a-half hours of music. I say it’s more than eight and a half. I haven’t actually counted; it’s probably like twelve. I don’t know! It’s a lot of music. So I play a recital that’s around seventy minutes of music. But some places want less, so I can—it’s very flexible. Some places, they’re like, “We can do up to two hours.” So then I do a little more. But I think about, you know, “Where does it start? How does it go? Where does it end? What’s powerful?” And I think about, like, “Where do I put the pieces that are really dissonant and challenging, and crunchy, and demanding? Then, how can I have something that follows it that is more consonant? How can I have a piece that’s beautiful, and where do I put that, and how does it have a big impact?” So, yeah, it’s—yes, I do think about that.

PP: I mean it’s critical. It’s critical for your audience’s participation—

AD: Yes, and their engagement.

PP: Exactly.

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

MORE ON CONNOR CHEE

Not yet a subscriber? Join for only $7.99/mo or $36/yr.
Book Review: Weight in the Fingertips: A Musical Odyssey from Soviet Ukraine to the World Stage by Inna Faliks
Back to Discovery Page

Episode 17: Ann DuHamel, Pianist, Teaching Artist, and 2023-24 McKnight Artist Fellow

Written By Piano Inspires

Join Ann DuHamel as she discusses the importance of music as an agent of change in the world with Pamela Pike.

Ann DuHamel, McKnight Artist Fellow and Past President of the Minnesota Music Teachers Association, currently serves as Associate Professor at the University of Minnesota Morris. She is a bibliophile, chocoholic, eccentric gardener, Futurama fan, piano nerd, tea drinker, walking enthusiast, and yoga devotee.

Podcast: Play in new window

Collegiate Resources

Written By Piano Inspires

Calling all collegiate students! Looking for more information about how The Frances Clark Center can help you as you navigate the early stages of your career? Look no further. In this article, we will share information and resources including employment and postgraduate opportunities, opportunities for students, discounts on purchases, and other ways to get involved. To learn more, click here.

Employment and Postgraduate Opportunities

Continuing Education at The New School for Music Study

The Frances Clark Center offers a range of teacher education initiatives at The New School for Music Study in Princeton, NJ. These programs build on the educational philosophy and legacy of renowned founders Frances Clark and Louise Goss, and have produced internationally recognized teachers and performers.

Opportunities for Students

Journal of Piano Research

The Frances Clark Center for Keyboard Pedagogy is pleased to launch the Journal of Piano Research, a new peer-reviewed research journal and high-quality source of research articles dedicated to piano teaching, learning, and performance. The journal is an international, peer-reviewed publication promoting the exploration, discussion, and dissemination of high-level research that will advance professional practice and scholarship.

The Journal of Piano Research invites submissions of scholarly manuscripts based upon completed empirical research conducted through a variety of scientific methodologies, including quantitative, qualitative, ethnographic, historical, and philosophical methods.

LEARN MORE
SUBMIT A MANUSCRIPT

Discounts on Purchases

Collegiate Group Subscriptions

Discounted Piano Magazine Group Subscriptions

Group subscriptions to PianoInspires.com are perfect for piano pedagogy classes, university membership chapters, or applied piano studios. Subscriptions include Piano Magazine quarterly issues and all digital resources on PianoInspires.com, including our comprehensive search feature. Subscriptions also include discounts on individual online courses and Jane Magrath’s Piano Literature for Teaching and Performance.

Collegiate Group TypeRegular PriceCollegiate Group Price
Digital Only$36/person$29.45/person
Print + Digital
(US and Canadian Shipping Only)		US: $48/person
CAN: $54/person		US: $38.95/person
CAN: $44.65/person
LEARN more and subscribe

Other Ways to Get Involved

We invite students to interact with our engaging, educational content on social media. Our socials are a place for discussing relevant topics in pedagogy, engaging with teaching video content, diving deeper on composers and pieces, connecting with other curious pianists, and enjoying freebies and discounts throughout the year. Our socials are a great way to encourage students to interact with their craft on a daily basis through channels they are adept at navigating.

Questions on our collegiate resources? Email support@pianoinspires.com.

Looking for more resources for collegiate students? Learn more by clicking here.

Back to Discovery Page

Episode 16: Michelle Conda, Educator, Author, and 2023 Frances Clark Lifetime Achievement Award Recipient

Written By Piano Inspires

Join Michelle Conda and Andrea McAlister in a discussion about pedagogy, legacy, and Dr. Conda’s deserving recognition as the 2023 Frances Clark Center Lifetime Achievement Award Winner. 

Michelle Conda is Professor of Piano Pedagogy at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music and is praised for her extraordinary contributions to the field of piano pedagogy.




Podcast: Play in new window

Piano Inspires Podcast: Michelle Conda

Written By Michelle Conda, Andrea Mcalister

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

Jennifer Snow, Michelle Conda, and Samuel Holland after Conda was presented the Lifetime Achievement Award at NCKP 2023: The Piano Conference.

Andrea McAlister: Now, let’s dive back a little bit because we’re talking about, you know, this passion and the experience of making music. Was this something that you always were called to do? So when you were young and starting lessons and—did you always have that joy about making music? Was there ever a time that you thought, “oh, I don’t know if this is something that I love enough to make my profession,” or, “I don’t want to practice today?”

Michelle Conda: Oh, I go every day “I don’t want to practice today!” You know, practice is one of those things that I have a saying it’s called “Butt to the Bench.” Once you get your butt to the bench, it’s lots of fun, but there’s a lot of things that can get in the way of that. So it takes a lot—I know—a lot of discipline to do that. But, to answer the first part of your question, by age seven when I could write, my first little essay about what you’re going to do when you grow up [was]: “I’m going to be a piano teacher.” But even before that—the piano was mine. When I was like five years old, we got a piano for Christmas. Actually on one of the pictures I sent in, they show me at that age when I was a little curly haired girl. I was cute then, and—

AM: You’re cute now.

MC: But still, my piano’s in the background. My piano. My sisters were not allowed to play it. That was my piano. Then, after a year or two, I had to get my tonsils out. I did not want to get my tonsils out. I acted naughty, and finally ended up having to go home because I got a fever. But in the meantime, I made life miserable for everybody at the hospital, everyone. Well, I still had to get them out. So my mother baited me. She goes, “If you are a nice girl, you can get piano lessons.” I was the nicest girl you’ve ever seen, and I got my piano lessons and it was so great. I practiced every day. I think the things that really helped me a lot as a child [were], first of all my mother; she’s still my inspiration. She’s ninety-five, still on her own, still plays the piano.

AM: Oh, great.

MC: Oh, yeah. But she would inspire me to practice. She would just say, “I love hearing you play this.” She wouldn’t correct me ever—well, she didn’t like me chewing gum. But besides that, she didn’t correct me and music making became just a joy. Then, honestly playing for church, because when you first start playing for church—I probably was horrible. I didn’t know that; everybody said I did great. And then you just keep playing and you play for this musical and that musical—your life! Being a pianist is not a job. It’s a lifestyle. And it was my lifestyle all through high school, all through grade school.

Then I went to college my freshman year. For one brief week, I said, “I think I want to be a philosophy major.” That week went pretty fast. What happened is I got Angie Schmid, my piano teacher, who inspired me to go deep into music. I had no idea how deep you could go into music, and that was it. I finished my philosophy course and I was out. Music became the center of my life again. I—you know, you fight it your whole life kind of. If you’re a faculty member, you can get tuition remission, and I’ve looked through course catalogs before, like we all do, and say, “Oh, maybe I’ll do this, maybe I’ll—.” But when it really comes down to it, I’ve been led in this direction. The only other part of this direction I’ve been led also to is the teaching element, and I started teaching when I was very young, probably eight, nine, ten years old.

AM: That’s very young.

MC: Yeah.

AM: Who were you teaching?

MC: The neighborhood kids, everybody. Well I was already playing pretty well by ten. I just ended up teaching all the neighborhood kids. Oh, my God, I was such a horrible, horrible teacher. But luckily, they were very forgiving of my teaching and I got better. The more I got better, the more I did a better job teaching. Also, the more I became student-centered and less ‘this is what I want you to do,’ and really paid attention to how someone was learning, I got even better. Then—tell me if I bore you—but I started to teach communiversity classes. These are evening courses. I just loved teaching them. There would be a waiting list for these classes. I couldn’t understand what I was doing right. That’s why I decided to get my doctorate, because I wanted to find out what I was doing right. Thank you, and thank all the people from the University of Oklahoma—you helped me, encouraged me. When I learned how people can encourage you to do well, that also changed my teaching. Because I learned encouragement is so much better than negative talk.

AM: It’s interesting to hear you talk about the student-centered part of your teaching and how that developed. It takes some people decades to learn that that’s how students learn best, and that encouragement is how students learn best. It seems like that’s just something that you realized from an early age.

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

MORE ON MICHELLE CONDA

Not yet a subscriber? Join for only $7.99/mo or $36/yr.
TRIBUTES TO Frances Clark Center Lifetime Achievement Honorees Michelle Conda & George Litterst
Back to Discovery Page

Leveraging Artificial Intelligence in the Piano Studio

Written By Omar Roy

We would like to thank Omar Roy for this insightful article on artificial intelligence and its use in the piano studio. Want to learn more about artificial intelligence? Check out the latest issue of Piano Magazine. Our new summer issue can be found by clicking here.

In recent years, the proliferation of Artificial Intelligence (AI) has simultaneously caused both awe and controversy. Many express curiosity regarding how it works, what its limitations are, and how it might be used for their benefit. However, AI is not a new phenomenon and has been around for decades, with its development beginning as early as the 1940s and 1950s, most notably with the work of Alan Turing.1 On a more sophisticated scale, OpenAI’s “ChatGPT” has become almost ubiquitous with the term “AI,” though it is only one example of the extent to which AI has been developed. But what exactly is ChatGPT, and why is it so popular?

ChatGPT is a Generative AI (GenAI) constructed around a Large Language Model (LLM). According to Microsoft, a large language model is “a type of AI that can process and produce natural language text. It learns from…text data such as books, articles, and web pages to discover patterns and rules of language from them.”2 Whenever you send a text message, you’ll see predictive text suggestions to complete your message—that’s an LLM at work. ChatGPT happens to be one of the most comprehensive and most widely known. With the right prompts, ChatGPT can generate content that is surprisingly sophisticated, making it a powerful tool in the right hands.

ChatGPT and the Independent Piano Teacher

While much effort is being channeled into uncovering the latent possibilities for AI as a pedagogical aid, the use of AI in business-related administrative tasks is well documented.

Within the independent piano studio, teachers often act in other capacities. These include the roles of business owner, manager, customer service representative, and event planner, to name a few. Each of these roles is often laden with administrative responsibilities that can be time consuming. While there exists software to address many of the tasks that teachers may run into, some teachers may not yet have a large enough studio, or the revenue, to justify a subscription to a studio management system. In this article, we’ll explore a few examples of common tasks and how teachers can leverage ChatGPT to accomplish those tasks more efficiently.3

Remember, tools like ChatGPT
are LLMs – Large Language Models,
not creative thinkers or researchers.

Entering the AI Playground

Scheduling, for example, can be an extremely time-consuming task without the aid of some sort of scheduling software. ChatGPT makes swift work of collating multiple availabilities into a single schedule in mere seconds. Simply copying and pasting the various availabilities into the prompt area and asking ChatGPT to assign times based on mutual availability yielded the following result.

You:

Compile the following schedules of availability so that each person gets a single 1-hour meeting with me on either Monday or Tuesday between the hours of 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM. People may not share the same time with each other.

Michael: Monday 9:00am-12:00pm, 1:00pm to 2:00pm, 3:30pm – 4:30pm; Tuesday 12:00-1:00pm, 2:00pm-3:30pm

Vivek: Monday 9:00am-10:00am, 1:00pm to 2:00pm, 3:00pm – 4:30pm; Tuesday 12:00-1:00pm, 2:30pm-4:30pm

Xiaohan: Monday 10:00am-12:00pm, 1:00pm to 2:30pm, 3:30pm – 5:00pm; Tuesday 11:00am-1:00pm, 1:30pm-3:30pm

Stephanie: Monday 10:30am-12:00pm, 1:30pm to 3:00pm, 3:30pm – 4:30pm; Tuesday 12:00-1:00pm, 2:00pm-3:30pm

ChatGPT:

Here’s the compiled schedule with each person having a single 1-hour meeting with you on either Monday or Tuesday between 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM, and ensuring that no two people share the same time slot:

  • Michael: Monday 9:00am – 10:00am
  • Vivek: Monday 10:00am – 11:00am
  • Xiaohan: Monday 11:00am – 12:00pm
  • Stephanie: Monday 1:30pm – 2:30pm

All meetings are scheduled for 1 hour within your specified time frame, and each person has a unique time slot.

While this example involves only four students, it’s quite easy to scale this to larger numbers—if you have everything organized in a spreadsheet, you can even copy and paste the entire spreadsheet into the prompt box. Note that the current free version of ChatGPT (GPT 3.5) no longer supports document upload, so users must upgrade to the paid version (GPT 4.0) in order to access those features.

We hope you enjoyed this excerpt from Omar Roy’s article “Leveraging Artificial Intelligence in the Piano Studio.” To read the full article, please click here.

MORE ON ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

Not yet a subscriber? Join for only $7.99/mo or $36/yr.
Leveraging Artificial Intelligence in the Piano Studio
NOTES
  1. Harvard Medical School. “A Brief History of Artificial Intelligence.” Harvard University. Last modified September 28, 2017. sitn.hms.harvard.edu/flash/2017/history-artificial-intelligence/.
  2. Microsoft. “Workshop: Interact with OpenAI Models.” Microsoft. microsoft.github.io/Workshop-Interact-with-OpenAI-models/llms/.
  3. OpenAI. “ChatGPT: Conversational AI developed by OpenAI.” OpenAI. openai.com/chatgpt.
Back to Discovery Page

Piano Inspires Podcast: George Litterst

Written By George Litterst, Shana Kirk

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

Sam Holland, George Litterst, and Jennifer Snow after Litterst was presented with the 2023 Frances Clark Center Lifetime Achievement Award.

Shana Kirk: As I’m listening to you today and reflecting on our history as collaborators and colleagues, a few things repeat—a few themes, if you will. So our little motifs that we find over and over in the life of George Litterst are “passionate persistence;” there is another one that you kind of alluded to a little bit earlier, which was “always asking why.” So this just incredible, deep curiosity that is childlike in so many ways. We’ve had this conversation before that, you know, we sometimes train the curiosity out of children, and it’s much better if we don’t. It’s also challenging in many ways if we don’t—but endless curiosity. And then finally, a generosity, which is what you just exhibited; generosity that is always sharing the credit, and often taking way more time and way more effort than would be expected of someone who asks you a simple question, and then you find them in a corner later still hovering over two computers! So much generosity to make sure anyone who asks a question gets it answered thoroughly, sometimes a week or two later. [laughs] But always with incredible thoroughness. What’s the future of George Litterst, and not just the future of George Litterst—how are you and your work, changing the world? I’ll say another question as well to encompass that, which is: what impact is music having on the world?

George Litterst: Okay, well, there are quite a number of questions in there. I’ll first start by saying that the basic work of enabling and assisting the community of musicians to take advantage of the technologies that we currently have is really far from over. It’s true that because of the pandemic, people had to suddenly start doing things that they didn’t do before and got out of their comfort zone, and got used to making better use of computers and things like that. But I think that their use has been still rather narrowly focused and we have a long path to go still to connect teaching to what’s actually happening when you’re playing the instrument, to the learning process. All of which is to say that the things that we’ve developed up to this point, I don’t think are yet fully exploited. So there’s a lot of work to be done just to evangelize what we have done to this point. A lot of my focus today is on an application that we have called SuperScore, which is an interactive platform for the delivery of sheet music in digital formats. It’s unique in the sense that the notation display itself is liquid—you can resize it and it gets literally re-engraved on the fly, which makes a big difference for the person that—one person needs to be able to have help discriminating between lines and spaces and they need big size. Somebody else is able to look at groups of notes and realize what the harmony is and what the horizontal patterns are, and they need to see more music at a time. So we do this at a publication quality and I think we’re the only ones currently who achieved that. Thanks, of course, to Frank Weinstock.

SK: Well, I should point out SuperScore is an iPad app.

GL: Yes, and it has interactivity directly from a MIDI capable instrument, much of those qualities you talked about with Home Concert [Xtreme]. What is driving me musically with that is my engagement with composers, arrangers, and publishers who produce the content because it’s not just the technology by itself that’s worth anything. It’s how does it fit into people’s creative lives, and it’s a vehicle for putting forward content. And not only contemporary content, but we’re using it to bring new life to works of the past and especially works that have been unjustly forgotten. One of my most interesting recent publications has been the Twelve Country Dances of Ignatius Sancho, a man who composed in the 1870s, who was born on a slave ship in the 1720s. He has a remarkable story—ends up growing up as a slave in England, finds a way to get emancipated, becomes a property owner. He’s the first person of African descent to vote in a parliamentary election and somehow, it’s not known where and how, he developed some musical skills and composed five publications of music.

SK: That element of SuperScore has been one of the most fascinating to me—just the breadth of composers, arrangers, content producers, teachers, authors, and instructional materials.

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

MORE ON GEORGE LITTERST

Not yet a subscriber? Join for only $7.99/mo or $36/yr.
Town Hall Discussion: Technology Tips
Back to Discovery Page

The Piano Geeks: A Tribute to George Litterst

Written By Shana Kirk

We would like to thank Shana Kirk for this tribute to George Litterst, one of last year’s Frances Clark Center Lifetime Achievement Award Winners. To read the full article with more tributes to George Litterst and Michelle Conda, click here.

George Litterst at NCKP 2023: The Piano Conference.

I first met George Litterst in 2000, when a mutual colleague dragged me across an exhibit floor, insisting that I see this laptop with a musical score scrolling across the screen while following the keyboard player’s tempo. That first introduction to George and his fledgling Home Concert 2000 software turned out to be a pivotal moment in my own professional development. It launched more collaborations that I can count, not to mention a decades-long friendship and an ever-growing collective of like-minded colleagues.

Shana Kirk hugging George Litterst.
Samuel Holland, George Litterst, Jennifer Snow

Following George’s enthusiasm for the cutting edge, our group of piano geeks has constantly pursued technology-based solutions to challenges a teacher, student, or performer could encounter. In the early 2000s, it was George’s tinkering with MIDI over dial-up Internet that laid a foundation for Internet MIDI software, now used worldwide for online piano teaching. Observing a need for more audience-friendly performances, George hacked together assorted technologies to create multimedia recitals that could be synchronized from a keyboard. Of course, it was also George who first advocated for efficiencies, such as chatting over AOL Instant Messenger, collaborating on proposals using Dropbox, and even traveling with GPS from a cell phone!

Beyond such measurable contributions, George has most significantly led by example with his spirit of generosity. If you have asked George a question at a conference, you may have found yourself huddled with him an hour later. If you asked a question online or sent an email, you may have received an invitation to a Zoom meeting so thorough that it could count as a college credit.

I know I am speaking for many in saying this spirit of generosity has lifted our profession in immeasurable ways. We are honored to be friends and colleagues and look forward to many more years of working together!

We hope you enjoyed this excerpt from the tributes to the Frances Clark Center’s Lifetime Achievement Award winners. You can read the entire article by clicking here.

MORE ON GEORGE LITTERST

Not yet a subscriber? Join for only $7.99/mo or $36/yr.
Town Hall Discussion: Technology Tips
Back to Discovery Page

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!

MORE ON OLGA KERN

Not yet a subscriber? Join for only $7.99/mo or $36/yr.
OLGA KERN: A Consummate and Positive ARTIST
Back to Discovery Page
Search
piano inspires logo, black with colored stripes in the tail of the piano