IRMT Conference, New Zealand

I have been a guest of the IRMT (Institute of Registered Music Teachers - www.irmt.org.nz) in New Zealand before. This time I was already in the country prior to the “Beyond Microjazz” tour of Australia but my invitation was originally via Rosemary Miller, a wonderful piano teacher and composer based in Christchurch who can safely claim to have been my first composition teacher.

I was very pleased to be sharing the billing at this conference with Graeme Humphrey. Graeme, a fellow New Zealander, has been a Professor of Piano at the Royal Academy of Music since 1974, and has been actively involved in adjudicating, examining and teaching around the world. He is also active in seminars for teachers in the United Kingdom and abroad, and maintains a substantial private teaching practice with pupils of all ages and stages. He has a particular interest in piano duets and we, along with typesetter Andrew Jones, have created a website called www.fourhandsplus.com, that predominantly features music for four hands. A number of excellent anthologies have been produced, some of which include new compositions of mine. Graeme did a session on duets before I arrived at the conference.

My first session was called Music for Ensemble and followed on from Graeme’s session quite naturally. I began by talking about Two at a Time, the series of duet anthologies that Graeme and I have helped to create. We played together and I also got a number of teachers to join us in an expanded keyboard ensemble. 

I then talked about the ensemble aspects of American Popular Piano, ranging from Preparatory pieces to Level 6. Finally, I presented Microjazz ensemble pieces, including an on-the-spot percussion ensemble (done by the audience divided into 10 parts) created to accompany a 6-hand arrangement of Tip Top from Microjazz Collection 1! I drew people’s attention to the Microjazz Trios Collection before we finished with an SA and piano version of Joshua fought the battle of Jericho from my new choral book In the need of prayer with the full group.


I think teachers felt that the session had a definite cumulative element, with more and more performers taking part as the afternoon progressed. It was a great way to involve everybody, including a violinist and cellist.


The second session was called Getting Started, Keeping Going and was exploring improvisation. I started by talking about why some students improvise before teachers try to teach them how to do it! The reasons for this include:


: They’ve heard (or seen) music they’d like to play and try to work it out
: They’ve started to write their own songs
: They play in church
: They have jazz-playing parents (the best reason!)


This is all great, but teachers can feel left out and may need to start to explore simple improvisation ideas themselves if they are going to be able to comment usefully. American Popular Piano is a good way to start this educative process. 


We all agreed that there are a number of reasons why teaching improvisation is a “good thing” for all students – encouraging listening skills, improving time playing, even discovering the individual “voice” of the student. 


I then took the teachers through the various steps we use in APP – learning a piece, identifying its key and which notes are used, clapping a beat, clapping a (given) rhythm, playing the rhythm on the key note, then on more notes….I was ably assisted by one of the teachers, who started off doing the simple tasks required of her and ended up improvising beautifully:

This is all great, but teachers can feel left out and may need to start to explore simple improvisation ideas themselves if they are going to be able to comment usefully. American Popular Piano is a good way to start this educative process. 

We all agreed that there are a number of reasons why teaching improvisation is a “good thing” for all students – encouraging listening skills, improving time playing, even discovering the individual “voice” of the student.

Tour of Australia and New Zealand - January 2012

I toured Australia a number of times in the 1980s, initially introducing myself to Australian teachers, subsequently promoting and explaining List E, a popular music syllabus created by the AMEB (Australian Music Education Board – www.ameb.edu.au) that strongly featured Microjazz, Microstyles and the Rock Preludes and Latin Preludes. Having established my name and material in Australia, I left it until 2012 to return – yes, over 20 years! In the meantime, the AMEB had continued to use many of my pieces and other examination boards, notably ANZCA, NZMEB and the St Cecilia Music Examination Board, had also made extensive use of my compositions in the intervening years. So when I returned to Australia I was hardly an unknown quantity. The tour, masterminded by Gina Wake from Hal Leonard Australia, was grandly called “Beyond Microjazz”. It showcased American Popular Piano, a series new to most Australian teachers, Connections, the 8-part series originated by Frederick Harris Music in Canada in 2007 and Microjazz and other Boosey & Hawkes books written since around 1990.

Teacher numbers were strong throughout the tour, which started in Melbourne on January 17^th, in a striking old church in Hawthorn. 

Every presentation on this tour was a full day presentation, starting at 9.30 and finishing at 3.30. First up each day was a session called “Simply the easiest way to improvise”, featuring American Popular Piano. This was always the most challenging session for teachers in theory, but the amount of audience participation and the simplicity of approach meant that participants were hugely enthusiastic and anxious to give it all a try back home. Here is one of my many “students” braving it on stage, this time in Canberra:

The Sydney presentation was at The Kings School in North Parramatta. I was delighted to have not only Elissa Milne, my co-presenter on the July 2011 tour (and an excellent composer herself) in the audience, but also her mother, a first-rate Australian (but originally New Zealand!) piano teacher. Here’s a picture of me and Elissa at the Sydney workshop:

The next part of the tour was in Queensland – Brisbane, Cairns and Townsville. I must at this point pay tribute to the sterling work of the dealers who bravely and ably supported the “Beyond Microjazz” tour. In Brisbane, Masson Music was the host dealer – here I am with John Masson, the owner:

Cairns in Queensland is amazingly far north (look at a map of Australia and see what I mean!) I had a small but very enthusiastic audience here:

Next stop was Townsville, which proved to be a delightful city. I was reminded by a teacher there that I had come to Townsville in the late 80s. She had her notes from that presentation with her (!) and said “see you on the next one” as I was leaving! As with the other venues, I tried to find audience members who could participate on stage and was pleased to find an enthusiastic young student to act as a demonstrator, Daniel Kelso, who is also a budding composer:

As I mentioned, Part 1 of each presentation was dedicated to American Popular Piano and the teaching of improvisation. Part 2 was called “making the Connection” and showcased the Connections series. A number of Connections pieces have already been selected by both the AMEB and ANZCA examination boards, so teachers were already interested in the series. If a number of keyboards were available, I often got a group of teachers to come and play a chord each of Samba Band from Connections 3 before getting them to improvise simple rhythms to a backing track. Here is such a scene in Launceston (Tasmania)

Part 3 of the presentations was the springboard for the tour – “Beyond Microjazz”. This involved a whistle-stop tour through Boosey & Hawkes publications that have appeared since 1990, with a particular emphasis on the Preludes series, the Concert Collections, The Easiest Way To Improvise and the new Micro series. I had quite a few video clips from Youtube of performances by students of this repertoire, which proved to be a very effective way of demonstrating how accessible the material is.. 

In Adelaide I was honoured to have Keran Bailey in the audience – he’s an excellent Australian educational composer who is also well represented on examination lists. Check out www.kerinbailey.com.au.

Perth was HOT! Here’s the temperature indicator in the car on the way from the presentation to the airport:

I was amazed to hear that people had flown in from Darwin for the presentation, not to mention a dealer from Townsville. And I was delighted to meet Martin Lamb, a musician and mathematician who I knew from New Zealand in the early 70s (yes, folks, I’m that old!)

There was a nice postscript to the Australian tour – I did one final presentation in Auckland, New Zealand. This was hosted by KBB Music and I was pleased to meet, for the first time, my cousin Leith Milson’s daughter Catherine and her piano teacher mother:

Leith is a jazz player based in Tauranga – I spent all my summer holidays with his family when I was a child. So there is music in the family after all..

The big tour finally ended, but I’m back in both Australia and New Zealand in October 2012 to be at a conference in New South Wales, but also to run a number of Christopher Norton Piano Festivals in Australia and New Zealand. These will enable me to work with lots of students and teachers, doing both group improvisation and masterclasses, using the repertoire presented on this tour. See you all soon!

Musiquest Piano Festival, Pune, India

I met Roxana Anklesaria-Doctor, the founder of Musiquest, at MTNA in Milwaukee in March 2011 and I expressed an interest in coming to India if an opportunity ever presented itself. She took my remark seriously enough to invite me, along with a starry cast of North American adjudicators, to take part in Musiquest 2011, a pan-Indian event that has happened bi-annually since 2007. 

Pune is the second largest city, after Mumbai, in the state of Maharashtra. It’s known for various cultural activities, including classical music, spirituality, theatre, sports, and literature. These activities and many job opportunities attract migrants and students from all over India and abroad, which makes for a city of many communities and cultures.

This year’s Musiquest drew the biggest numbers yet - 164 student participants and 26 teachers from all over India. The students, ranging in age from 5 years old to adult, performed more than 650 pieces.

The participants in Musiquest were divided into Preliminary, Junior, Intermediate and Advanced divisions.  Additionally, this year’s festival featured two new divisions - Popular Music & Jazz (adjudicated by me) and Piano Ensemble.  Attractive prizes were offered, including a piano, a music scholarship to the USA, music books and cash prizes.
 The Festival was presented in a workshop format, with participants receiving instruction at the piano as well as written adjudications and participation certificates from the international panel of adjudicators.  The emphasis was always on motivation and positive criticism. 

I was honoured to be part of the international adjudication panel, pictured below - renowned teachers/pedagogues Gail Lew (USA), Scott McBride Smith (USA), Roxanna Anklesaria-Doctor (India), Peter Mack (Ireland/USA), Murray Nichol (Canada) and Mary Tickner (Canada)   Additionally, Peter Mack, Mary Tickner, Murray Nichol and I gave private lessons during the festival.  Each of the adjudicators  also presented one or more workshops for participants and for the professional development of the participating teachers.

 Prize winners were announced on the evening of November 26, 2011, following a dazzling recital by Dr. Peter Mack at the magnificent Ista Hotel in Pune.

The Honors Recital was held on November 27, 2011. This event featured the awards ceremony and all prize winners (and me!) performed to a very appreciative audience.
I was most impressed by the thorough preparation of the students – pretty much no grinding to a halt or memory lapses, good sounds being produced most of the time and, in my classes, a steady beat being maintained. I talked to the students about technical matters that would make the pieces feel better to play and that would make audiences feel more “drawn in”. Things like avoiding harsh sounds, playing with only finger weight when required, using arm weight to create orchestra-like effects - these and many other matters proved to be immediately helpful to the performers and immediately discernible sound-wise to the listeners. Here I am working with one of the young students:

 Students in India, like most parts of the world, are familiar with pop and even jazz styles, so they are often starting from a position of strength – they know what the piece should sound like right away. There was a relaxation and enjoyment about their playing of popular styles that made the adjudication a delight. And there were some outstanding performances – the winner of the overall advanced prize, 11 year old Aditya Deshpande, played a fiendishly difficult arrangement of Tico Tico na fuba by Marc-Andre Hamelin and the co-winner of the Adbvanced Popular Music division, Nadine Crasto, played an equally difficult piece by Percy Garinger, Cakewalk Smasher, with consummate ease.
I was also pleased to spend time with students who wanted to explore improvisation – in particular Marcus Daniel from Bangelore and Ron Cha from Assam. Here they are:

I also gave private lessons to 2 budding composers. Noshir Engineer from Bombay had written a fascinating programmatic piece called Encounter and Indusekhar Menon had penned a lovely romantic ballad called Guiding Light. For the latter piece, I improvised an altered version for him which he was able to take away on videotape.
My workshops were Unlocking Popular Styles and Getting Vertical  - for both of these, I had lots of participation from the audience and it seemed to entertain and inform in equal measure. 
I hope to get back to India to do some Christopher Norton Piano Festivals.  It was a great week, impeccably organized. And the food was fantastic! 


Here are some links for press coverage of the event:
http://www.punemirror.in/article/63/2011112320111123083051705b29b81b1/Playing-the-notes.html
http://www.sakaaltimes.com/sakaaltimesbeta/20111124/5373981267569154557.htm
http://www.deccanherald.com/content/193454/pune-host-piano-festival-nov.html
http://nripress.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=135571
http://nripress.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=136001

Pianist Event, Central London

As it says on their website, (www.pianistmagazine.com) you don't just read Pianist, you play it! Pianist contains interviews with top concert pianists, full-length features on current (piano) issues, CD and sheet music reviews, Q&As, teaching tips, readers' letters, concert highlights - basically all that one might hope to find in a leading music magazine. 
The added bonus comes in the form of 40 pages of specially selected sheet music, for beginner, intermediate and advanced pianists. A free tutorial CD comes with every issue, so that you can get to hear the pieces before playing them. Pianist is like having a piano teacher in your own home, whenever you need one!

Over the last year, I have written a series of articles for Pianist called Keyboard Class, which give tips on playing contemporary popular styles. I’ve written new pieces for these articles, as well as suggesting other pieces of mine, from Microjazz or American Popular Piano, that are in a similar style to the one featured. These articles have been very popular, providing as they do a range of different styles from the styles featured in the rest of the magazine. Pianist, with some prompting from Schott (my distributors) decided to advertise a live event, presented by me, for subscribers to the magazine. So we booked the concert hall in the basement of Schott’s central London offices and advertised the event. 

We got a very respectable number of people along, mostly keen amateur players. I started by playing some pieces:

 I then kicked off a discussion about why people might want to play popular piano styles. Social occasions, playing styles that are familiar, a desire to do something a bit freer…a number of good suggestions were made. I then demonstrated a number of simple “things you must know” in order to have some chance of being a popular (in both senses of the word) pianist.

 The audience were pleased to see that I was prepared to use some “students” (members of the audience) who enjoyed doing some chord playing with and without backing tracks. My first student hadn’t played pop styles before and I think still quite enjoyed the experience:

 My second student was very pleased that I’d referred to Someone like You (Adele) as an example of a pop piano style that was very accessible. And he was startled to find himself playing along with a heavy rock track within minutes of coming up:

 My third student was a more experienced player and she was able to use her reading skills to good effect. The event really was for, as the blurb says, beginner, intermediate and advanced players:

There was a Q & A session at the end and even some book signing. We (Pianist  and I) hope to do some other similar events around the UK in the new year, in conjunction with Roland, whose new range of digital pianos include a “Christopher Norton” button and lots of data supplied by me. 

It was great to actually meet some of the readers of the magazine and I was also very pleased not only to see the magazine’s editor, but also the publisher, all the way down from Leeds. Thanks to Pianist and Schott for making this happen – more please!