Tag: Chicago piano instructor

  • Teaching young ones

    I hear all sorts of thing about the young kids these days. They’re impossible to deal with, they don’t care about anything, they don’t want to do anything else but be on their phone, they are arrogant, selfish and their parents are way too indulgent. Maybe I am missing something but I do not encounter…

  • Coming back to it.

    I’ve been through some difficult times. So much so that it has stopped me from practicing. Oh, I am not crying on my sorry fate, I am not a survivor who went through a trauma so deep that my dreams will be nightmares for the rest of my days. I’ve got some light traumas, and…

  • Overwhelmed by greatness.

    I was on Tidal and looking at a Beethoven Sonata, the “Pathetique” one. I said looking because before I would have to press play on any given interpretation I had to chose one. And there lays the problem: too many great ones. I then proceeded to go on YouTube to be guided by a specialist…

  • My piano.

    Today is the day when my piano gets tuned. I can hear the tuner, Randy, doing his work right above my head. As I listen, I always wonder if I could have done his job. The answer comes pretty quickly: no! It seems impossibly difficult to hear the minute little difference between the tones. So,…

  • Moving the continent.

    There are many reasons why you should pay a teacher to study an instrument. One of the benefit that’s not talked about vey often is the fact that a teacher can hear/see your progress from week to week. If you are serious about your playing and you diligently practice every day hoping to get a…

  • How long should one practice?

    Loaded question if ever there was one. Usually teacher throw a fake card to evade the subject, something like “It depends”, or ‘What do you want to achieve?”. I’ll give you the skinny, I won’t try to avoid to answer: “You give me a half-hour 6 times a week and we’ll be good friends”. There!…

  • Beethoven trivia.

    Here are a few facts. The professional orchestra came to be, in large measure, as a vehicle for the incessant performance of Beethoven’s Symphonies. And the art of conducting came from just that. The first 33 1/3 r.p.m LP, in 1931, contained the Fifth symphony from Beethoven, and the duration of the first-generation compact disk…

  • Listening experience.

    As I have mentioned in earlier post, I now routinely sit down and listen to some music. I do nothing else: I relax, eyes closed and open the cabbage leaves on each side of my melon to explore the garden of sound proposed to my attention (we are in the fall, which is the gathering…

  • The 3 maybe 4 big ones.

    I’ve been getting some CD box sets lately. I Got the George Szell one, for example. That was after I purchased the Vladimir Ashkenazy one. We are talking about classical music, here. George Szell was a conductor who directed the Cleveland Symphonic Orchestra. Ashkenazy is a pianist who’s taste and interpretation happen to coincide a…

  • Amadeus

    We were watching yesterday the movie “Amadeus” with my Sweetie. We were presented with the Director’s cut, a version I hadn’t seen yet. Two scenes, previously unknown stood out. The first one is when Mozart wife Stanzie agrees to delivers sexual favors to Salieri in order for her husband to be able to teach young…