Music Appreciation: Recital Attendance

June 6, 2010 Jennifer Boster

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Perhaps one of the best ways to promote and teach music appreciation to your students is to have them attend recitals and concerts. I know that when I personally attend piano recitals and symphony concerts, I am always so inspired to be a better musician and to practice more. I love getting to know new repertoire by hearing it performed live. A student who has never been to the symphony or to the recital of a talented pianist is truly missing out on a wonderful experience that most likely will influence them greatly.

I have never required recital/concert attendance in the past in my studio. However, I am seriously considering doing this in the near future. (I am actually preparing to move to Texas in a couple of months, which is very exciting for me because I have the opportunity to re-vamp my studio policies and get a fresh start on teaching! Wahoo!) I believe it would be so beneficial for students to even attend one recital or concert per year.

If you do a little research and use a little creativity, you can find so many opportunities in your area for your students to be exposed to great music, for very reasonable prices and even for free. Here are some ideas:

Local major symphonies/orchestras – If you are lucky enough to have a major symphony near you, what an opportunity for a young pianist! They often have wonderful student discounts (tickets for as low as $8 or so) and even do concert series designed particularly for children and young people. And of course they often feature amazing pianists!

Community symphonies/orchestras – Although maybe not quite as talented as the larger, more professional symphonies, these local community groups can be wonderful opportunities for students to experience an orchestra (usually for very affordable rates).

Local university/college music departments – If you have a university with a music department near you, chances are there are many performances (student recitals, faculty recitals, band and orchestra concerts, choir concerts, etc.) which are open to the public and are absolutely free of cost. Don’t miss out on this awesome opportunity for your students!

Major piano competitions – many cities host international piano competitions (for example, the Gina Bachauer International Piano Competition held in Salt Lake City) – often you can purchase tickets or even get in for free!

Studio master classes/performance classes/studio recitals – even events held in your own studio can help familiarize your students with piano repertoire and help them gain an appreciation for music.

Performing for your students! – why not perform for your students at your studio recitals? This can be a great motivator for your own practicing (hehe) while at the same time introducing some great music to your young students.

Joint studio recitals – join forces with another local piano studio and have the studios perform for each other – students will get to hear new repertoire and possibly discover some great pieces they’d love to learn as well!

I have included a Recital Report sheet that I created for my studio – haven’t used it yet but hopefully I will in the near future!

How have you encouraged recital/concert attendance in your studio?

Recital Report

Repertoire Wish List

June 4, 2010 Jennifer Boster

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Just a fun item I wanted to share –

I put this page in my students’ binders. My hope is that as they are doing their listening assignments, or when they attend recitals or hear their peers perform, they will discover pieces that they love and would really like to learn! This is just a fun place where we can keep track of all our future repertoire…

Repertoire Wish List

What’s on your repertoire wish list??
…mine includes…Before Sleep and Dreams by Aaron Kernis, Spring Fairy, Summer Fairy, Autumn Fairy and Winter Fairy from Prokofiev’s Cinderella, Op. 97 (these are somewhat in progress), Daisies by Rachmaninoff…

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Introducing the Four Musical Periods

June 3, 2010 Jennifer Boster

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Here’s a fun way to get your students listening to classical music and to introduce the four musical periods (don’t miss more ideas on introducing the musical periods here) –

Have your students listen to George Rochberg’s Sixth String Quartet (Variations on Pachelbel’s Canon in D). I love this piece – it introduces each musical period by playing Pachelbel’s Canon in each style. It starts out Baroque, and then segues into Classical, Romantic, then Modern, and then eventually makes its way back to Baroque. Check it out!

Listening Assignments

June 3, 2010 Jennifer Boster

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I really feel very strongly about the importance of teaching our students about music and piano literature by having them actually listen to classical music.

If you asked your students who their favorite composers are, what would they say? Would they have a favorite? Would they even know enough composers to have a favorite – or know any at all? Would they look at you with a blank stare? I have gotten the whole spectrum of answers on this one, but most often it is the blank stare or “I don’t know” response.

We need to familiarize our students with the amazing works of piano literature by the great composers. We need to teach them that classical music is wonderful and amazing and really can be fun. How many of you have students who have said on occasion that they don’t like classical music? I have, and in most cases the student really has not been exposed to much classical music at all. It is our job as piano teachers to educate our students about classical music, and give them many opportunities for listening and learning.

I love using listening assignments in my studio to help my students learn about classical music. I like to assign a listening assignment at least every few weeks or so. Here are some ideas for sources of recordings:

Awesome Website – First off, I need to share one of my FAVORITE websites of all time. Seriously if you have not seen this you need to check it out – every piano teacher should know about this awesome resource. PianoSociety.com is an AMAZING website where you can listen to and download for free thousands of mp3 recordings of piano literature by almost 200 amateur and professional pianists. They have piano literature of over 150 composers. Each composer on the site also has a brief biography and an extended biography. There is background information about all of the major works, as well. There is also a link to another site with a huge amount of classical sheet music to download. Are you still reading this? Go check it out! (But don’t forget to come back and read the rest of my post! hehe)

Have Students Check Out CD’s – For the listening assignments I give to my students, I have made CD’s on my computer from my own classical recording library and then I loan them out to students. This works so well because I am able to create different CD’s for different composers, different musical periods, different difficulty levels, etc. Sometimes I’ll make a CD with a particular student in mind with a few pieces I’d like them to listen to. Sometimes the students’ whole family enjoys listening to their listening CD’s in the car!

Other Websites – The San Francisco Symphony has a great kids website with a “Radio” where you can listen to lots of classical music; ClassicsForKids.com is another great site to listen to classical music; The New York Philharmonic KidZone website has an AWESOME Composer Gallery where you can learn about tons of composers and listen to some of their pieces.

Listening Assignments

When first teaching students about the different musical periods, I like to loan them a CD with one or two pieces from each period. These can be more elementary pieces that the student would most likely learn in the near future (simple Minuets, short Sonatinas, etc.), more intermediate works (Bach Inventions and easier Preludes, Clementi Sonatinas, Beethoven Sonatinas, easier Chopin Preludes and Waltzes, etc.), or you could just go for the difficult, fun-to-listen-to pieces to get them really excited about classical music! (a fun, upbeat Gigue from a Bach suite, Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata third movement, Liszt Hungarian Rhapsodies, Rachmaninoff Preludes or Etudes, a great Impressionistic piece like Ravel’s Jeux d’Eau, etc….you get the idea!)

I often give them a handout with a brief history of piano music (which I have included below). I got this from an old teacher years ago, and I am not sure where she got it. It gives the student basic characteristics about each period, and representative composers from each period.

Brief History of Piano Music

For any listening assignment, I like to have my students write down something they liked about each piece. It’s sometimes fun to have them rate the piece – 1 star means they didn’t really care for the piece, 5 stars means they want to learn it!

I often assign my students a CD with music of a particular composer – Debussy, Bach, Schumann, etc. I love having them get to know each composer, and hope that by doing these assignments they will be better able to actually have a favorite composer!

For young students who may not have the attention span to listen to an entire CD, I sometimes like to loan them a CD with just two or three short pieces on them. Just a couple of weeks ago I did this for a student – I made a CD with two contrasting pieces (CPE Bach’s Solfeggietto and Schumann’s Traumerei) and had him listen and write down characteristics of each piece – fast or slow, staccato or legato, loud or soft, etc. We then compared the two and talked about the differences.

I hope these ideas got you thinking about how to get our students listening to classical music. What other ideas do you use in your studio? Any other great websites we should all know about?

p.s. don’t forget to take our poll of the week!

Teaching Music Appreciation

June 1, 2010 Jennifer Boster

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Aside from producing talented, well-rounded pianists, shouldn’t our whole goal in teaching be to instill in our students an appreciation for and a love of music?

Most of my students have not been on the serious, college piano major track. Don’t get me wrong, I have had a few students who were amazingly talented and were very dedicated to their piano study, who I would not be surprised to see studying piano in college someday. They always practiced diligently, truly progressed week by week and played more challenging classical repertoire (which was such a joy to teach!). However, the majority of my students up until now have not been like that.

What is it that is important to give to our students who may not become super talented concert pianists or piano majors? I believe that one of the most important things you can leave with your students is a love and an appreciation for music and music-making. Give them a great, positive experience. Give them the tools they need to become proficient pianists, and give them the experiences needed to gain an appreciation for good music.

I want my students to be able to sit back and listen to a piece of music, and recognize the beauty in it. I want them to want to listen to piano music, and to really appreciate it. I want them to realize that classical music is fun and amazing, that the piano is a beautiful instrument and that music can be so powerful.

I want them to hear a piece and be inspired by it. I want them to come to me and say, “I heard this piece and really want to learn it!!” This is a piece I heard performed live by Leon Fleisher, and was so awed by it that I had to learn it. I opened my senior recital with this piece…

I hope that we can all strive in our individual studios to really instill a great appreciation for music in each of our students.

New topic: Teaching Music Appreciation

June 1, 2010 Jennifer Boster

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So much more could be said on th issue of practicing…I am sure we will re-visit the subject at some point 🙂 In the meantime, here are the poll results for this week’s poll:

On Practicing:

Other answer: “I could be a lot better about addressing this issue with my students!”

We’re moving on to a new subject…Teaching Music Appreciation. This may seem like a no-brainer; of course we all strive to teach our students to appreciate music. We’d like to talk about ways to go about this, and ideas for making it fun. In my mind this topic includes so many things – appreciation of classical music (that is a biggie for me, since I am classically-trained), music listening, piano literature, concert attendance, music history, etc. Can’t wait to hear your input!

Resources for Teaching Music Appreciation

February 18, 2010 Jennifer Boster

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