I am excited to be seeing my students again on Monday. I have heard from a few people to assure me that they are continuing and I am going to go ahead and assume that the rest of you are also continuing because I have to set up my screens this weekend. If you are not returning please let me know as soon as you can.
Just a reminder that fees are due from Monday and my new fee schedule is $32.50 a half hour. I will calculate the monthly amount in your email. Monday students please factor in Martin Luther King day 1/21/19 if you are not coming to music that day. I will be teaching for those who want to come.
If you have time please try to come to Chelsea Daniel’s concert tomorrow night at Croasdaile Village Chapel at 7 pm (see details below).
Adult students who come to lessons on Friday, there will not be lessons Friday February 1. Sadly I have a major dentist appointment in the morning and last time I should have taken the day off but didn’t and probably did not make a lot of sense that day!
Chelsea Daniel playing at Croasdaile:
My ex-student, Chelsea Daniel, is back for a few short weeks and is in practice for her recital this coming semester. To give her some performance experience, I have arranged for her to give a short concert at Croasdaile Village Chapel tomorrow evening (Saturday 1/5/19) at 7 pm. The concert will only last a short time, maybe 40 minutes.
Chelsea will start with two short Nocturnes by Poulenc, numbers 3 and 7. I love Poulenc’s piano music, so playful and whimsical and very French.
She will then play the first two movements of a piano sonata by Florence Price, an African American composer whose work is only starting to attract serious attention after years of obscurity.
This is what John Lambert said of Florence Price in the last issue of Classical Voice North America:
She had three strikes against her – maybe four. She was black. She was female. She wrote “classical” music. And she was from Arkansas. Born in 1887, young Florence played in a recital at age 4, had her first work published at 11, and was high school valedictorian three years later.
I did not know that she wrote over 300 pieces of music including a piano concerto which was performed last year in Chapel Hill – I wish I had known! She was a prolific composer who incorporated influences of Spirituals and Jazz into her very well-written music.
Please come and hear Chelsea play if you have time! It is the same village where I have my Soirees except not in the auditorium but int the Chapel.
Chelsea was my piano student for a short few years and then she won a place at the UNCSA in Winston-Salem where she studied piano for her last three year of high school. She is now in her third year at UT Austin Butler School of Music. Her teacher is Andrew Brownell. She hopes to specialize in the music of Florence Price.
