Practice, teaching, and the music itself. Research-informed, written for parents and adult students.
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Why Harpsichord Music Is Full of Ornaments
If you’ve looked at a page of French harpsichord music, you’ve seen the little signs hovering over the notes. Squiggles, crosses, slashes, commas. Piano students often treat them as decoration…
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Free Piano Concerts and Recitals in Tampa Bay
Hearing live piano is one of the best things a student can do between lessons. You hear what the instrument can do in a real room, you watch how a…
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Bach and Handel at the Keyboard, and Why Bach’s Suites Stayed in Piano Lessons
Almost every piano student meets Bach. A minuet from the Anna Magdalena Notebook, the C major Prelude, an Invention, and eventually a French or English Suite. Handel wrote keyboard suites…
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Rameau for Piano Students and the Showpieces He Wrote
Ask a music student what Jean-Philippe Rameau is known for and you’ll usually hear about harmony. That’s fair. Rameau (1683-1764) published his Traité de l’harmonie in 1722, and the way…
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Recital Decorum: How to Bow, What to Wear, and How to Be a Great Audience
Most families think of a recital as the two minutes their child spends playing. I think of it as everything from the moment they stand up from their seat until…
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Now Booking: Live Piano for Your Party in Tampa Bay
For years the piano playing I did outside the studio stayed inside two rooms: the recital hall at Piano Distributors and the practice rooms at USF. Both are places where…
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When Is the Best Time of Year to Start Piano Lessons?
Every August, my inbox fills with a version of the same question: is fall the right time to start piano lessons? Families are signing up for soccer and scouts, the…
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Why Old Keyboard Instruments Still Matter to How You Play
Most of us learn on one instrument. You sit down at a modern piano, you press a key, and a felt-covered hammer throws itself at three steel strings stretched across…
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Your Teacher Has Homework Now: I’m Starting a Master of Music at USF
This fall I am starting a Master of Music in piano performance at the University of South Florida. I was accepted this spring with a scholarship and a graduate assistantship…
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Piano Is a Year-Round Sport: Making Practice Work When School Starts
Every August, the family calendar gets rewritten. School starts, activities resume, homework returns, and the loose rhythm of summer disappears overnight. In my studio, students play year round, so nobody…