End of summer round-up

A cornucopia of resources

Do you also have mixed feelings as the summer break draws to a close?

I love teaching, I really do, and there’s a big part of me that’s looking forward to getting back to it. But I also love the summer break. The freedom to work on whatever I want, whenever I want, is a real joy.

Several of people I admire — David Barton, for example, and Wendy Stevens — have been thinking deeply about the importance of living in sync with the seasons. Reading them, I’ve found myself becoming more aware of how my energy levels really ebb and flow with the weather. I’m coming to accept that I can’t work at 100% effectiveness 100% of the time. That’s particularly true in the chilly winters and hot summers of my city.

The summer is my creative season, not because the weather suits me (it doesn’t!) but because I have the time and space to do what Cal Newport calls Deep Work. I find that I can compose in “shallow work”, but it’s difficult to get into the flow.

I bring this up because it’s closely related to one of the things you’ve asked about many times in the reader survey.

Making time for creativity

Over the next weeks I’ll be sharing a series of posts about how to make time for creativity in piano lessons. This is the topic that comes up by far the most frequently in answers to the reader survey, and my posts cover a variety of approaches, including working in seasons and fitting it in with exams.

I’m also close to finishing the following posts:

• a review of Piano By Ear by Lucinda Mackworth-Young

• several of my “Creative Introductions” posts that have creative activities for teaching repertoire

• an interview with a fascinating composer and teacher who set up a thriving piano school with creativity and community at its centre

Essential online resources for piano teachers

I’ve also written a post for PianoDao.com summarising the online teaching resources that I find most useful. You can find it here.

The post complements Andrew Eales’ excellent summary about offline resources.

More on The Thinking Pianist

Writer and pianist Rhonda Rizzo has just published a supremely eloquent post about The Thinking Pianist, a course I raved about a few weeks ago. It’s a brilliant review, I really recommend checking it out.

Music reviews

I also write reviews for A Closer Listen, a site that focuses on instrumental music of all genres, and I encourage you to check out the two most recent ones. Marie Awadis and Lambert are two young contemporary composers, writing exciting music and enjoying real success as performers around Europe. It’s so important to share inspiring stories of successful young composers with our students, and these are two prime examples!

September is rushing towards us!

I’ve got a tonne of emailing and timetabling to do, as I imagine do many of you, and I wish you every success with it. Don’t forget to take a break and enjoy at least part of the weekend!

Greetings from Frankfurt,

Garreth