After years of thinking about it, I enrolled in jazz piano lessons this year. I was motivated by my students who are "pumped" about Conservatory Canada's Contemporary Idioms syllabus and the Teacher's Choice Study in the Royal Conservatory of Music syllabus. I was also looking for ways to "jazz" up my gig repertoire.
Piano Pedagogy Links
I haven't started lesson planning for the 2007/08 year yet. I planned to catch up on my bookkeeping and registrations this week before moving onto to lesson plans; but I am taking longer than I thought I would on updating my address book. Of course, it doesn't help that this is the worst month for me and allergies. I refuse to do any bookkeeping when my head is in a perpetual foggy, sniffly, snivelly and sneezy state. However, I'm almost done my address book project and I think I finally found an allergy/sinus combination that is breaking through that fog; so I'll have no more excuses. I will have to do my bookkeeping.
For my colleagues who are doing their lesson planning now (or plan to do so soon), here are a few online resources I've stumbled upon. Hopefully, we can gleam some gems from these:
I may have posted a couple of these in a previous entry, but it would have been a while back.My apologies for the list being piano heavy. Feel free to write submit websites, book titles, periodicals that you use to help with lesson planning - all instruments welcome.
(c) 2007 by Musespeak(tm), Calgary, AB, Canada. All rights reserved.~
The Collaborative Piano Blog
On Tips and Reminders (My Personal APTA Festival Experience)
In my blog entry Sturm und Drang - Second Movement, I mentioned that I submitted my entry to the Teachers' Solo/Recital Class at the APTA Festival. My performance was this morning. Playing in the teacher's class was a unique festival experience. Gone was the churning stomach, hyperventilation and jello fingers from my competitive festival days.
On Sturm und drang - Second Movement
Perhaps the spirit of my former piano teacher Irina Ginzburg was hovering as I was filling out my own registration form for the APTA Festival. She would want me to challenge myself. Before I could stop myself, I registered for the Teacher Recital class, which means three songs. It's not too scary, at least, I hope it isn't. It's just that I now have to add two senior level pieces to my practice list (on top of students' songs and gig repertoire...to practice in the wee hours in the night).