Members of the Piano Ninja Tricksters Club are flying in from across the country for our annual Beyond The Keys piano retreat here in Monterey, California. A group of adult pianists, a lot of piano talk, and some unusual experiments. Let's just say this is not your typical adult piano camp. There's even a piano movie night. 🍿 (If we get to it. For the last two years, we've talked right through it. 🤷♀️) But the moment I keep thinking about is Friday night. That's when they'll walk into a room...
14 days ago • 1 min read
I'm wearing a back brace while a compression fracture heals, with strict orders not to lift more than 5 pounds. And I was about to fly from California to Toronto. ✈️I'm a lifelong over-packer. 🧳 🧳 Carry-on only was a stretch. Carry-on I wasn't allowed to lift? 🤦♀️ The trip was for Stu McLaren's 10-year celebration of The Membership Experience. Stu is my membership mentor and I've been meeting with him and his fabulous team for 5 years on Zoom! Before I knew Stu, my first attempt at a...
21 days ago • 1 min read
During my podcast interview with Rachel Ehring, host of The Topmusic Piano Podcast, she asked me about a sentence every teacher hears over and over... "I played it better at home." Sound familiar? 🤦♀️ Here's my answer. It's not your playing. It's your audience. All week, you play for nobody. Then you sit down for one person, and that's the first time you've practiced being listened to. Nerves are a skill. You have to practice them too. So I ask my students to climb The Audience Ladder. 🪜 1️⃣...
28 days ago • 1 min read
My comments sections are always open. Which means that people say whatever they want about my playing. 👀 Watch my reaction to this and similar comments. Here's the thing. You've got a voice like that too. Maybe it never shows up in a comment section. It just plays in your head while you practice. Same voice. Same job. My answer to it is always the same and you're welcome to borrow it. Screw Perfect. Just Make Music! 🎼 One small practice experiment Next time that voice starts up mid-practice,...
about 1 month ago • 1 min read
I bombed my semi-finals at the National Chopin Competition in 1984. That was the last thing I expected, after spending a year in 7th heaven, working exclusively on Chopin. Etudes, a scherzo, ballade, nocturne, waltz and polonaise. An opus of mazurkas, 6 preludes, the E minor Concerto, and one piece I didn't give enough time. The 2nd Sonata.I drew #1 in playing order and started round one with a flawless performance of the C Major Etude. It served its purpose and got the judges' attention....
about 1 month ago • 2 min read
After I shared my Cliburn audition of the Bach B flat Partita, the comments on YouTube and Instagram kept mentioning my trills. People noticed how easy they sounded. Here's the thing. I haven't practiced a trill inside a piece since graduate school. 🤷♀️ Over 40 years ago, I learned a five-minute warm-up from John Perry, R.I.P. I've done it almost every practice session since. When a trill shows up in whatever I'm playing, it just works. I don't stop to negotiate with my wrist. I don't wonder...
about 2 months ago • 1 min read
Someone caught it. 23 seconds in, on the Gigue from the B-flat Partita, the one from my 1989 Cliburn audition. A mistake, small, just a switch in the notes. He commented so everyone would hear it. Barely noticeable, but he felt good catching it. 🥺 I replied without thinking twice. "My motto now is Screw Perfect. Just Make Music." 131 likes on that reply. More than the comment that started it. That reel also got me 466 new followers on Instagram which lead to celebrating 10K followers...
about 2 months ago • 1 min read
I started my 1989 Cliburn audition with the Bach B flat Partita. 👀 Watch it here. ⬇️ Someone left a comment I keep coming back to... Good question. Here's the answer I didn't expect to give. No judge ever told me. No scoresheet. Nothing written down anywhere. I built that story out of an absence. I always paired my Bach with my Chopin. People complimented the Chopin. Every single time. Nobody said a word about the Bach. So I decided the silence meant something. 🤦♀️ No comment became "not good...
2 months ago • 1 min read
I found old footage of my 1989 Cliburn audition. It inspired me to do something a little different. I recorded a message to her. To 27-year-old me, about to walk into that room. Here are highlights of what I told her. She thought it was all or nothing. Get into the Cliburn, or the career she'd worked her whole life for wasn't even possible. That's what she believed in every bone in her body. I know how devastated she was when she didn't get in. She thought that was the end. She didn't know it...
2 months ago • 1 min read