One way in which music students set goals is by scheduling performances for friends and families and colleagues. Lately, Flourishing Muse students have taken advantage of Durham Music Teachers Association (DMTA) recitals. On February 27, 5 students performed and each performance was a special event for their families:
Khaleel played a Benda Sonatina (very fast, needs slick fingers); Kavisha played two of her level 3 RCM exam pieces perfectly from memory; Lucas played two pieces and you can find videos under student performances; Annabel played her own composition (where are all my other composers?) and Louise astonished us with the jazzy City of Stars, also up under Student Performances.
On Sunday 3/7, five of my ukulele and guitar students participated in a zoom recital much enjoyed by grandparents and other family members:
This was the program:
Hal Sharp: “Believer” Imagine Dragons
Jane Sharp: “More Hearts than Mine” Ingrid Andress
Leo Piaraccini: “Iphone” with thanks to Paul Simon’s Kodachrome!
Ava Pieraccini: “Cups” Anna Kendrick
Kaitlyn Busch: “Jackie and Wilson” Hozier
Kaitlyn is my most senior player and she had these comments for her fellow students:
“Tell Hal I loved how the ukulele sounded on Believer. Jane has such a nice singing voice and she sounded like she really understood the song. iPhone sounded great and made me laugh! Leo should write more songs. I love the Cups song and Ava’s voice is so impressive and sounded so great with it :)”
The next recital for the DMTA will be Saturday March 27 and I already have five willing performers! The last one will be April 24 and two of my most advanced students will be playing then (you know who you are!).
These are wonderful opportunities and there is nothing like a scheduled performance to elicit more practice! And it is so amazing to see how much students can improve in a short week. Imagine if they practiced with the same focus over several weeks/months?
If there are more students who would like to perform at the next 2 DMTA recitals please let me know. I will try to fit in everyone who wants to perform before the end of the Spring Semester which will be the second week in June.
I am pleased that I was able to run the short string zoom recital myself with major help from Carol (my in-house tech support – lucky me as Don Bartosik says!) and I look forward to a few more until everything goes back to in-person. Thanks so much to Carol and again to my daughter Rose in the UK whom we only had to call 3 times!
Hopefully in December we will be having a Holiday Soiree somewhere!! Hurray!!
Fees: Thank you so much to the people who have already paid March fees and thank you in anticipation of the others who are going to pay this week! 😁
Spring Breaks:
I know various schools are taking various spring breaks and they do not always coincide with mine. I will not be teaching from Thursday April 1 to Friday April 9. If your spring break is earlier and you want a rescheduled lesson let me know; on the other hand if you are taking a break then, also let me know (thanks to those who have already done this). Alternatively, if you are on your spring break and still want your lesson that is fine except for the days when I am not teaching.
The Future:
I do not want to get into definites here but I strongly suspect that there will not be in-person lessons until after June 15. After that I do hope to go back to at least some in-person lessons over the summer. However, some of my students will always be remote (can’t drive from High Point or Charlotte for lessons or fly from the UK!) and I am thinking that there will be one day with all remote lessons and that would probably be Mondays. I don’t want to have to switch from remote to in-person mid teaching session (don’t know how classroom teachers are doing it!). On the subject of remote lessons, there may be local people who want to remain in remote lessons for whatever reason; please talk to me about that possibility.
In addition I will not be taking any more guitar students because I just do not have time to adequately practice guitar, and barre chords on guitar are interfering with my left hand which I want to save for piano.
I will keep my current ukulele students if they want to continue, but I probably will not take any new ones because preparation is a problem with no real text book to use (Carol has suggested for years that I write one – but time…)
I will not be teaching singing as a separate skill. The problems with my teeth have severely limited my ability to demonstrate serious vocal work and I want to focus on piano music other than song accompaniments. There are fabulous vocal teachers and coaches in the Triangle who are more specialized than me. I have loved teaching singing to Michelle and Richard and others but it is time for a new vocal coach!
I want to focus on piano and especially composition and the possibility of teaching Finale, the music notation software that I use for my own compositions. I have not yet figured out how to do that but I am considering the issue. I will have some free spaces for piano in Fall because 3 year 12’s will be off to college, Quinn, Kaitlyn and Andrew.
One other piece of important news: I need to raise my fees to $35 for a half hour lesson. Rises in costs of living have made this necessary, I am sorry. Hour lessons would be $70 and I will still offer to 10% discount for more than one learning in the same family. Hope everyone can work with that.
Thanks to all of you for learning music with me and for sticking at it during this pandemic. The end is in sight I think!
With happy wishes from Lorna
