CMVR - Conservatório de Música de Vila Real, Portugal

Workshop report written by Victor Gomes

The acclaimed worldwide pedagogue and composer Christopher Norton has been last 19th May in Vila Real – Portugal, to hold a workshop in CMVR (http://www.conservatoriodemusicadevilareal.org/) dedicated to his own teaching methods and music improvisation. The event was specifically targeted to the conservatoire community and a massive participation took place among students and teachers. Chris Norton, presented his most popular method – The Microjazz – and also The American Popular Piano method, in which the interaction with the students was rather appreciated.

For the event, C.N. made his full presentation on a HPi-7, combined with a FP-7 and an acoustic grand piano, all property of the CMVR. In fact, Mr. Chris Norton strongly suggested the board to use an HPi series in his workshop, once he could use very easily the ‘Christopher Norton File’ and show many of his music files and the advantages of using it through the HPi-7. 
Besides those instruments, a personal laptop was used to show some informations and videos on a data show.

Most part of the tunes he played (or showed) included accompaniments on Midi File format and also Audio Tracks, some of them coming out from the HPi-7 itself. Besides that, it was shown the benefits of using the DigiScore system to display the scores.

As a result of the huge success achieved with this event, the board of the CMVR is considering to organise a 2nd event with Christopher Norton – a Piano Festival – which will be based, for sure on Roland digital pianos/keyboards.  
All the teachers present at the workshop were so surprised with C. Norton pedagogical suggestion and methods, that they felt the need to acquire some more skills regarding the endless pedagogical resources of the HPi-7. In this meeting not only piano teacher will be presented, but all the other instrumental teachers as well.

The event was widely broadcast throughout the local media, but the echoes of such event will spread all over many other official music schools in the country. It was the very first time that an official Portuguese music school organised an event like the one. 


Christopher Norton was, as always, very supportive, highly professional, but also very happy with the success of it. He put on his website and Facebook an extensive report of the event.