Field Notes on Music Teaching & Learning

Assessment is a process of measuring, evaluating, and documenting learning. Measuring a student’s progress in the studio provides an opportunity for reflection, evaluation, and deeper understanding as we consider with our students what they know and can explain or demonstrate. This informs our teaching, curriculum planning, and repertoire choices. In turn, it also helps students develop a diverse...

In a recent class with three intermediate students (8th-11th grade), we compared the music of Franz Schubert and Max Richter. Schubert was a prolific Austrian composer, writing at the end of the Classical period and the beginning of the Romantic period. During his brief life, he wrote over 1,500 works. He was known for his storytelling abilities: long, singing lines, dramatic mood swings, an impro...

What does it look like to be a musician who is also an inventor—someone whose curiosity about how things work shapes the way he approaches his instrument? Pianist Josef Hofmann spent his entire career exploring that, and his story is worth knowing. This year marks the 150th anniversary of Hofmann's birth. He was a Polish-American pianist, born in 1876, and considered by many—including Sergei Rachm...

March in my studio means one thing: informance season. We spend 10 to 12 weeks getting ready—learning and analyzing music, practicing demonstrations, preparing to talk to the audience. And this year, I knew from the start that the theme was going to require a little more planning than usual. If you’re new around here, I define a musical informance as an informal, informational performance that int...

At the end of January, we lost a wonderful musician, teacher, and pedagogue, Marvin Blickenstaff. You’ve probably heard me talk about Marvin on the podcast before—he had a profound impact on my teaching. With a career spanning over six decades, Marvin dedicated himself to serving piano students and teachers worldwide. He valued deep emotional expression at the keyboard and a human connection throu...

February is Black History Month—a time to honor and celebrate the contributions of African Americans. As a music teacher, this prompts me to pause and evaluate what I’m teaching, but also why. I ask questions like: How much diversity is present in my students’ method books and repertoire? Which pieces should we skip due to their complicated history? How can I make more thoughtful, informed choices...

It’s my last week of teaching for the year, and I've been reflecting on the supplemental books that have been most successful with my elementary and early intermediate students this year. The new year can be a great time to start fresh: with new repertoire, new technical routines, or new creative challenges for our students. As we prepare for the Spring semester and look forward to lessons resumin...

One of the things I love about teaching is that we can draw on many disciplines to make our work better—art, psychology, learning theories, and even neuroscience. Recently, I’ve been reading about what brain research can tell us about practicing and how we learn, and it’s fascinating. Welcome back to our 2-part series on practicing. In part 1, we talked about the art of practicing. I shared what I...

This fall, I read two books about practicing: The first is Madeline Bruser’s, The Art of Practicing: A Guide to Making Music from the Heart . The second is Molly Gebrian’s 2024 release, Learn Faster, Perform Better: A Musician's Guide to the Neuroscience of Practicing . Art and science. Because practicing requires both. This is part 1 of a 2-part series about practicing and what I’m learning and a...

It was about this time last year when I got a panicked email from a parent: “Jack broke his left wrist this week. What does this mean for piano? He’s in a cast.” Has this ever happened to you? Some parents may assume that lessons need to be paused during this time. I mean, they can’t play with only one hand… or can they? The answer is yes, and there’s more and more one-handed repertoire available....

Learning to play the piano isn’t just about learning repertoire pieces. It’s about developing a set of keyboard skills that lets you make music anywhere, with anyone, in any style. Technique, performance, and sight-reading are part of it, but so are harmonization, transposition, chord knowledge, and voice-leading. It’s more than the ability to perform what’s on the page; it’s understanding how the...

When I was in grad school, I took an elective class on Improvisation. I remember shuffling into the 3rd-floor classroom that first day, pulling a blue chair into the semicircle like everyone else, unfolding the desk and preparing to take notes. Everyone was quiet. There was a palpable uncertainty among the group—all classical musicians by training. When had we ever been asked to improvise? No one...

Earlier this month, I hosted my 14th studio piano recital. There’s always so much that goes into planning and preparing for an event like this: Choosing repertoire Booking the venue Polishing memory Emailing parents Practicing “piano bows” Coordinating with the facilities manager and the piano tuner Borrowing percussion instruments from the music teacher Scheduling duet and ensemble rehearsals Fin...

It starts simply. Two blocked jazz chords with I-V in the bass. And then the vocalist comes in: “Twenty-four hours can go so fast. You look around, the day has passed…” This is Leonard Bernstein’s song “Some Other Time” with lyrics by Betty Comden and Adolph Green, written for the 1944 musical, On the Town. It’s about three sailors on 24-hour leave in New York City who meet three women before leav...

Some of you may not know this about me, but I’m a musician and an artist. I always loved art as a kid—from finger painting in my blue smock at my Little Tikes easel to coloring and tracing to the pastel class I took one summer. For a while, my answer to the question, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” was “An artist or illustrator.” Music was always there, too—singing and playing the piano...

March is Women’s History Month and by extension, Women in Music Month—an opportunity to acknowledge and celebrate women’s contributions to our field. As a teacher, I love finding ways to honor and celebrate things like this with my students. A few years ago, we did a studio-wide blues composition project (see Ep. 045 ) during the month of February, Black History Month. Then, there was the year I c...

When you think about practicing, what do you picture? Maybe you think about your instrument in the living room or your favorite practice room at school. Maybe you picture your studio with morning light streaking across the floor or in the evening with a few lamps casting a cozy glow.  Certainly, practicing happens in all of these spaces. But it can also happen at your desk, in the car, at the...

The Spring semester can be busy. With extra performances, we end up focusing more on performance skills—starting and finishing well, lifting hands back to our laps, how to practice performing at home, bowing, and memorization strategies. But as you know, there’s so much more that happens in a music lesson—so much more that we’re teaching and cultivating in our students. It’s not just about perform...

It’s the middle of December, which means you’re probably caught up in the rush of holiday performances, concerts, and recitals, studio classes, parties, and general busyness as we wrap up the year. Your to-do list is long, but the days are short, and you’re doing your best to stay on top of it all. But as busy as this time of year is, it can also be a time to pause and reflect. To embrace the quie...

I have a love/hate relationship with studio classes. I love the idea of them, and I love being able to offer them to my students. But I’ve never found a structure or approach that works.  At the school where I teach, I’m limited to a classroom with a single piano, which means students have to take turns or do activities that don’t involve an instrument. In addition, having a group of 6-8 stud...

It’s my second full week of teaching. I know some of you have been back to school and lessons for a month now, but I’m still getting my bearings, adjusting to a new schedule, organizing studio classes, and setting my intentions for the year. This is not a formal practice, but it’s something I sort of subconsciously do to mark the beginning of the new teaching year. I ask myself a few questions: -...

I don’t know about you, but this summer is going by very quickly. I know some of you may be going back to school this week or preparing to go back in a few weeks; here in New York, we still have a little summer left, as we don’t start back until after Labor Day. But regardless, it’s quick. At the beginning of the summer, I made a list of 5 things I wanted to work on outside of teaching. In this ep...

Last week, I taught a brand-new beginner her very first piano lesson. Cora is 5 1/2 and is quite mature for her age. She is the youngest of three—her two older brothers also study with me. In fact, the oldest started with me when he was 5, a few weeks after Cora was born, so it’s kind of a full-circle moment. I have a list of 12 things I like to get through in the first lesson. Twelve activities m...

The interview process for finding a music teacher goes both ways: The teacher is interviewing the student and family to assess musical, physical, and emotional readiness; determine if the student (and parents) have the same goals for musical study; and evaluate whether or not they'd be a good fit in the studio. We talked about this in the last episode, Ep. 072 - The Case for Consultations in the M...

Years ago, I received an email from a piano teacher asking about initial consultations and interviews. “What do you do? What questions do you ask? How long should it be? What materials do you give them?” These are great questions! Here are some of the reasons I offer consultations to prospective families in my studio: 1. They give you an opportunity to meet prospective students (and their parents)...