A Day in the Life of Christopher Norton

Musiquest Piano Festival, Pune, India

2011-11-29T16:42:00.001Z

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

2011-11-03T14:02:00.001Z

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!

Frankfurt Book Fair

2011-10-26T16:53:00.000+01:00

The Frankfurt Book Fair is an annual fixture on the calendar of book publishers and authors from all over the world – significant deals are done and major new releases promoted. I have been to the Frankfurt Music Fair many times, but this was my first visit to the Book Fair. Schott had taken a stand and I was invited to launch Rock & Pop Piano Basics, a new book on playing pop piano styles which is initially a German-only publication.

On day 1, I gave a presentation on this book, on the stand, which had been set up nicely with a grand piano and a great little sound system. No, I didn’t actually present in German (I hope that will come!), but the music styles and the look of the book attracted a good number of people to stop and listen. Here I am in full flight:

The pop book looks like it could be very popular and will soon be available in French and English. My able assistant in Frankfurt, Cornelia Angelov, has already been playing from the book at home and has found it both accessible and effective for a relative non-pop piano player.

Later that day, I played, still on the stand, a selection from right across the Microjazz series. This was to encourage passing traffic to stop and created a nice backdrop to the quiet hum of the fair. Here I am at the piano, in what looks like some kind of reverie:

The following day I played at the beginning and end (and in the middle) of a panel discussion about the effect of music on intelligence. The audience found it engaging (the panel discussion I mean) and the musical interludes were well received, particularly a pop ballad from Rock & Pop Piano Basics.

This was a low-key event, but I think worthwhile for further raising my profile in Germany and also for drawing people’s attention to one of my largest (160 pages) new books. Thanks to Schott Mainz for asking me to do this and for being, as always, such gracious hosts.

Aveiro, Portugal

2011-10-02T16:26:00.001+01:00

Aveiro is a charming city on the coast of central Portugal. It is sometimes referred to as the Portuguese Venice because of its network of canals and its history of trying to combat the forces of nature (ie water) over the centuries.

I came at the invitation of Nancy Lee Harper, an ex-pat American who has lived in Portugal for nearly 20 years and does a great job as a music professor at the university in Aveiro. Nancy is impressively active as a writer (she has recently written a very well-received biography of Manuel de Falla and also wrote a glowing review of American Popular piano for the EPTA journal) and is also a very accomplished pianist. See www.nancyleeharper.com for more details about her work. Here’s a picture of Nancy:

The audience for my presentation included teachers at the university, visiting piano teachers (some had travelled quite a distance to be there) and many students ie teachers-to-be. It was a young and very friendly crowd. Some of them knew about the Microjazz series, but I would say that most were new to my work. I played some pieces first to let them hear the range of styles and the level of difficulty. I then talked briefly about how my background – classical piano studies and a classical music degree followed by high school music teaching – led inevitably to the creation of Microjazz. I then played some Microjazz pieces and also showed a recent Youtube clip of a Chinese student playing one of the same pieces. I then, with some help from various audience members, played pieces from the range of publications on offer from Boosey & Hawkes – Microstyles, Concert Collections, Preludes and the new “Micro” series. And of course some of the new Christmas pieces. Here are some of the ever-attentive audience:

I was pleased to see one audience member holding up all of the Microjazz Duet Collections – she and I played Rio from Microjazz Concert Collection together . I also played a Youtube clip of a piece for 6 hands, Free’n’easy (from Microjazz Trios) done in a hugely entertaining way by three Italian pianists. See for yourself at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gKhmVO4F5m8

We had a good selection of books for people to look at and during the break. The music table was absolutely besieged by audience members.

The second part was devoted to American Popular Piano and the teaching of improvisation. I used quite a few audience members as “students” and this proved, as always, to be very effective. Using pieces from Levels 1, 2 and 6, from the series, I got students initially doing very simple things (with some help from the audience) and gradually got them to lose their inhibitions and come up with more sophisticated and stylish ideas, with their own “voices” emerging quite quickly. Here I am watching one of my new students playing:

Again, reaction to American Popular Piano and its methodology was excellent and I feel that this will be the beginning of its widespread use in Portugal. I hope to return before too long and there are plans to take in some other Portuguese cities as well. Watch this space!

National Conference on Keyboard Pedagogy 2011

2011-08-01T15:39:00.001+01:00

The Frances Clark Center for Keyboard Pedagogy is a not-for-profit educational institution in Kingston, New Jersey.

The work of the Center is based on the philosophy of music educator Frances Clark (1905-1998) Frances Clark believed passionately in the transformative power of music-making in the life of every person - not just the young, the gifted or the privileged. What set Frances Clark apart from her predecessors was her recognition that the quality of musical experience is directly related to the quality of the music teaching-learning experience. Thus she placed singular importance on the preparation of teachers.

"There is music in every child. The teacher's job is to find it and nurture it." -- Frances Clark

The Frances Clark Center advances its goals and serves local, national, and international audiences through its three components: The New School for Music Study, Clavier Companion magazine (to which I am an occasional contributor) and the National Conference on Keyboard Pedagogy (NCKP) a bi-annual event for mainly North American music teachers. Papers on a variety of topics are presented and there are also publisher and composer showcases. It attracts a lively and well-informed crowd who attend most sessions and are delighted to have lots of professional input before the new teaching year begins.

I was at NCKP with Novus Via Music Group, publishers of American Popular Piano and I did my by-now-familiar mix of one-on-one demonstrations at the booth and a showcase on the series with my collaborator Scott McBride Smith.

I was pleased to see lots of familiar faces, colleagues from a number of countries, other music publishers and of course many teachers who I have encountered at Piano Festivals, at regional conferences and at presentations. Lori Frazier is a great promoter of midi in education for Yamaha USA (and a great fan of www.christophernortonmidi.com) Here she is showing me some of the finer points of the Yamaha piano I was using at the booth:
The response from many teachers to American Popular Piano indicated that how it works is becoming clear to more and more piano studios – using contemporary popular pieces to draw students in and keep them motivated, using Etudes (improvisation) and Skills books to help cultivate better listening and using the Technic books to create strong fingers and secure keyboard geography. This seemed evident in the main presentation – I had a 16 year old girl improvising from scratch and finding her own voice quite quickly and I had 2 delightful brothers play Walking in the Sun (from APP Level 4 Ensemble) in a secure and positively joyful way. Here’s a picture of the boys, along with 2 more siblings (there are 8 children in the family altogether!)
I was also pleased to spend time with Ellen Tryba Chen, who put on the recent improv event in Saratoga, California and with Jan McMillan, who was a lively presence at the conference in Wagga Wagga. It really is getting to be a small world! And we were greatly helped throughout by the sterling work of Isaac Holbrook, who recently stood in for me at Summer Sizzle in Ontario . And I should pay tribute to the tireless work of Clarke MacIntosh, the driving force behind American Popular Piano, the person who first thought of getting me and Scott McBride Smith together.
The major travel season is now over – subsequent reports will come from mainly European destinations, with a trip to India in the diary in late November.

Australia

2011-07-21T17:05:00.003+01:00

This tour was my first major tour of Australia since the late 1980s (if memory serves me right) and was arranged by Hal Leonard Australia. They distribute Microjazz and all other Boosey & Hawkers products) as well as the Frederick Harris Connections series, as well as American Popular Piano. The tour was called, appropriately, “Beyond Microjazz”.

Unusually for me, I had a co-presenter on this tour, Elissa Milne (elissamilne.wordpress.com) Elissa is a leading educational composer in Australia, published by Faber Music in the UK and a regular presenter for Hal Leonard in Australia. She is a dynamic presenter and a talented performer and it was a great pleasure to be in a double-act with her.

1. Rockhampton, 11^th July 2011

We started the tour in Rockhampton, a city in Queensland, north of Brisbane. It was held at Green Brothers, a well-established music store in the city. This session was unusual in that we had keyboards for most of the teachers to share, so they were able to play along when I got onto the improvisation section of the presentation.

Don’t they look happy?

The presentation consisted of an introductory interview of me by Elissa, along the lines of “what have you been doing since you were last here?” and I then ran through recent (ie post-1990) Boosey & Hawkes publications before doing a presentation on American Popular Piano, ending with improvisation for everyone. In the second part, Elissa ran through the excellent new publications from Hal Leonard Australia - "Getting to Grade Two" and "Getting to Grade Three" (www.halleonard.com.au/cmsutil/file.php?file=edu_file_38.pdf) before I wrapped up proceedings with a whisk through Connections. The teachers found it all interesting and stimulating, at least according to the feedback sheets!

I also did a masterclass with local students, which was very enjoyable. One young performer played and after the masterclass asked for a photo. I did a double-take:

I was amazed to see my photo in the window of the shop, taken at the MTNA in Denver in 2009. And in 2010 the hosts of the event had flown David and Lesley Gereghty from Recreational Music center in San Diego to work with students – I did an event with Lesley and David in San Diego last year (see the blog archive again) Small world…

2. Brisbane 12^th July 2011

This event was held at the AMEB (Australian Music Education Board) in Brisbane – see www.ameb.edu.au. The interest in the event was sufficient to warrant a repeat of the presentation and enthusiasm and excitement from the audience were high at both presentations. Sales were also strong – here are some happy buyers after the first presentation:

There were some younger teachers at the second presentation, who were full of questions and positively buzzing (Elissa on the far right):

3.Melbourne 13th July 2011

The Melbourne workshop was held at Pat’s Music in Oakleigh and was packed. Again, enthusiasm was high and the whole presentation was regarded as both entertaining and informative. As I always do, I used an audience member to help me with improvisation and the picture below is my “student” after she did her unexpected public performance:

In the afternoon, I did a very enjoyable masterclass with students at a local Yamaha music school. This went very well – I’m always pleased to work with students as well as doing teacher presentations. Here are 2 of my delightful young students:

4. Sydney 14^th July 2011

The Sydney workshop was held upstairs at Music on the Move, the dealer who supplied music at Wagga Wagga. At this point I should pay tribute to the great work done by Gina Wake, the Hal Leonard Australia organizer of the tour, who was always alert to the needs of her demanding co-presenters and was always cheerful and positive. Here she is with John from Music on the Move:

The Sydney session was repeated and both audiences were really excited by the material. Here is a cross-section of one of the audiences:

All of the audiences on this mini-tour were pleased to hear that this was a taster for a bigger tour in January, involving day workshops and some days with students. I am very much looking forward to seeing many of these new Australian friends again in 2012 – it was heart-warming and humbling to hear the difference that Microjazz made to teachers in the 1980s and I hope that equally dramatic results will flow from the use of the new material in 2011.

Wagga Wagga

2011-07-17T03:17:00.003+01:00

The APPC – Australasian Piano Pedagogy Conference – was held in Wagga Wagga this year and I started my mini-tour of Australia there. I haven’t been in Australia in a music education capacity for a very long time, probably over 20 years, so it was great to see to what extent my work there in the 1980s has continued to bear fruit.

The first session I did at the conference was a masterclass with students from Wagga Wagga and Griffith. They played pieces from Microjazz and Microstyles as well as Latin Preludes and I was able to guide them to better hand positions, phrasing and dynamics so that they all felt a little more assured as public performers. The idea that a technical solution can create a better musical result cannot be over-stressed!

During the Convention, I did literally dozens of one-to-one sessions with teachers, particularly on improvisation, using American Popular Piano, but also repertoire sessions on Microjazz, Connections and APP. I met New Zealand teachers who competed against me in the 1975 Christchurch concerto competition and a teacher who was at school in Timaru with my wife back in 1969! There was a lovely Kawai piano in the exhibition room, so I played with lots of teachers:

and interacted with students:

The main session for me was a Keynote Lecture entitled “An approach to teaching improvisation that works!” and it was absolutely fully attended by a very responsive crowd. I got 2 students to help me throughout, both local girls and the way they blossomed as improvisers on stage was a source of astonishment even to them. Here they are, concentrating hard:

This was a dramatic launch of APP in Australasia and its repercussions will be felt in the months ahead. Teachers here, as in California, are very interested in incorporating improv into lessons – they have just been waiting for a way of doing it that works for them as well as for the student. And the consensus seemed to be that they have found it at last. Here is the audience at the Keynote Lecture:

I was also delighted to find myself sharing a bill with Murray McLachlan, Head of Keyboard at Chetham’s School of Music and head of EPTA in Europe (and a great pianist!)

and also Dr Siaw-Sing Koo, a colleague from Singapore who I got to know in Oakland. I was also delighted to meet and hear Jovanni-Rey de Pedro, an outstanding pianist and clinician who alerted us all to the wonderful compositions of Friedrich Gulda. A rich and varied programme and lots of great conversations made this a memorable conference.

Saratoga and San Jose

2011-07-17T03:13:00.001+01:00

The annual MTAC (Music Teachers Association of California) Convention is the largest convention for private music teachers in California. This year it was held in Oakland, a city I will always associate with Tower of Power, www.towerofpower.com, specifically their Back to Oakland album. But I flew in some days earlier than the conference so that I could do a 3-day improvisation camp with students from two private studios in the Bay Area.

Ellen Tryba Chen is a private teacher in Saratoga who was bold enough to invite me to her studio 2 years ago (see the blog in the archives!) to work with some of her students on improvisation, using American Popular Piano. Here she is :

The event went very well, so Ellen decided to do a bigger event this year, with students from her studio as well as students from the studio of another first-rate Californian teacher, Kathleen Goldbach.

We had 20 students, playing American Popular Piano pieces from Levels 1,2,4 and 5. Each group came together twice. The participants all really enjoyed playing together as an ensemble, using 2 grand pianos.

Each player was then able, through a steady accumulation of improv skills, to “find” their own voice and start to improvise in 2 contrasting styles. You should be able to tell how much fun the students of all ages were having from this photo:

At the end of the improvisation sessions, all of the students put on a public concert. This was held in the beautiful Sherman Clay Steinway showroom in Santa Clara, using 2 magnificent Steinway grand pianos, one signed by Lang Lang! With extended backing tracks creating a rich, full sound, the students all played very impressively in ensembles as well as each individual improvising at least twice. Chrissy Huang, who organizes concerts in this venue, was positively overwhelmed by the concert, describing as “the most joyful concert” she has ever seen there. She immediately set about organizing a much bigger event, a Christopher Norton Piano Festival that will include both improv and masterclasses as well as concerts, in 2012 - watch this space!

MTAC, Oakland, California

2011-07-17T03:10:00.002+01:00

I was delighted to join my colleagues Clarke MacIntosh and Scott McBride Smith at this MTAC convention, ably assisted by Richard and Isaac Holbrook and Charles Hung. I did 4 presentations at this conference and the reactions from the audiences indicated that American Popular Piano is really starting to make an impact. The 4 sessions were:

1. Vertical harmony

2. 5 easy steps to improvisation

3. A showcase on American Popular Piano with Scott McBride Smith

4. An improvisation workshop

Vertical Harmony was a session on recognizing chords. I began by asking audience members to come to the piano and play major and minor chords, with all their attendant inversions. What I was trying to do was get the audience to “spot” which inversion and also to demonstrate how re-voicing a chord can make a world of difference. We moved to 6th chords, 7th chords and 9th chords and time ran out as we got to maj9/6, to the obvious disappointment of the crowd. They wanted more chords!

I will create a section on vertical harmony for the website (www.americanpopular piano.com) in the very near future.

The 5 Easy Steps To Improvisation was a very well-attended session and I had a 9-year old student on stage throughout, who demonstrated very assuredly each point that I was trying to make in regard to clapping a beat, clapping and playing a rhythm, using more and more notes in that rhythm and using new rhythms (and notes) as well as grace notes, pedal notes and chords. There was lots of audience participation and I’m certain that all of the teachers went away thinking “I could do this!” The feeling of sheer joy was there again and this photo from the Novus Via booth, which shows a student improvising with Isaac Holbrook, was typical of students’ reactions to improvising for the first time:

The showcase also went very well and the audience found the inclusion of a young student, again doing some simple improv, a very telling addition. Here is the young player in question, pictured with me and Scott at the Novus Via booth:

My final session brought 2 girls back from the Saratoga improv sessions. They played for the audience and were once again playing both expressively and in their own unique way. I also added a third player, a young student who had come to the booth the day before and been given an extended lesson in improv by the composer. She also did really well.

I did lots of playing on the stand and the picture below shows me at the piano, with the full range of APP books behind me. By the end of the Convention, the books were virtually all gone. We’re on our way!

Minnesota

2011-07-17T02:44:00.001+01:00

My initial reason for visiting Minnesota was to take part in the wedding concert of Jon Michael Iverson and Pinar Basgoze. I first met Jon in 2007 at the MTNA in Toronto and he has become a good friend since and a great proselytizer for both Connections and American Popular Piano. See www.jonmichaeliverson.com and look for the Christopher Norton Project for a start!

Once it was established that I was visiting Minneapolis, I was invited to give a talk to the Minneapolis Music Teachers’ Forum – MMTF (www.mmmtforum.org) as well as do a number of activities at the MacPhail Centre for Music (www.macphail.org) and finally to do 2 presentations at the annual Minnesota Music Teachers’ Association conference (www.mnmusicteachers.com)

I flew in from London and after a short night’s sleep was (sort of) ready to start the presentations. First up was the MMTF – this was billed as a Meet the Composer event and I gave a talk about the variety of things I’ve done over the years as a composer, including my educational music series, but also referencing media music, ringtones, choral music etc. It was a small but enthusiastic group and there were quite a few questions and comments at the end. Here are some of the teachers who attended:

The event was very ably organized by Mary Jo Leier, pictured below.

One other person who came to the presentation was Nicola Melville, a New Zealand-born pianist who is now assistant professor of music at Carleton College, Minnesota, and is on the faculty of the Chautauqua Summer Festival. She has played my Rock Preludes a lot in concert and I was meeting her to discuss whether she might be able to make new recordings of the 4 books of Preludes and the 2 Concert Collections. Here’s a picture of Nicola – check her many activities via one of links above.

I then went across to MacPhail Center for Music, which is a community music school in a very impressive purpose-built building, with a fabulous concert hall and all the pianos and technological set-up that you could possibly wish for.

I gave a talk on all my materials to a group of the piano teaching staff – the presentation encompassed Microjazz and other Boosey & Hawkes material, but also Connections and American Popular Piano. Here I am at that session:

I felt there was a sophisticated appreciation from the MacPhail teaching staff of the pedagogical value of both the supplementary material (Microjazz and Connections) and the core material (American Popular Piano) being presented.

The following day was a public concert by 22 students, all playing pieces I’d written. It was preceded by a talk on what gets me started when I’m composing – I listed (and played examples of) 5 categories:

starting with a known style – not quite pastiche, but starting with a style which has its own conventions. Examples – Boogie from Microjazz Collection 3 and Positively Swinging from Connections 4.
Starting with a melodic idea – Stillness from American Popular Piano 4 and Stratford Air from American Popular Piano 8.
Starting with a rhythm – Samba from Microjazz Collection 2
Starting with a pattern or ostinato – Rainforest from Connections 3
Starting with a chord progression – The moonlit sky from Jazz Preludes Collection

I then played short recordings of pieces by composers or bands that have been a particular influence on me – Beethoven, Nielsen, Prokofiev, The Jazz Crusaders and Steely Dan!

The student concert included some excellent performances covering a wide range of styles and difficulty levels. The stirling work of the 12 Minnesota teachers represented was very much in evidence. The venue was very striking:

This was the first event like this at MacPhail like this – a non-competitive composer-oriented concert - and we hope it could lead to a Piano Festival event or events in the not-too-distant future.

The following day I took a kind of mass master-class, with probably 25 students playing for me. Most of them played classical pieces (Greig, Schumann, Gurlitt etc) and some played some of my pieces. I gradually got a number of piano playing fundamentals into the open, such as the importance of knowing what the fingering is of a passage, the importance of projection and the negative effects of weak fingers when playing scale passages! It was a positive session and many of the students played more than once - I called them back to play again in order to illustrate a particular point.

Later that day was the wedding concert of Jon Iverson and Pinar Basgoze. Friends and colleagues from Minnesota and further afield played in a concert celebrating their recent nuptials. There was a great variety of music played, from a Bob Dylan song accompanied by bass clarinet and mandolin to a Fantasy on Carmen for 8 players at 2 grand pianos. I played a Latin Prelude and a new piece, a multi-time signature take on Hark the herald from an uocoming Christmas book. The whole concert was live streamed on the internet and various people watched it in other parts of the world.

On the Monday and Tuesday (June 6^th and 7^th) I was an presenter at the MMTA and gave a talk – Unlocking Popular Styles – as well as a product session, on American Popular Piano. The first talk was well received, partly because I had lots of audience participation, creating ad hoc rock bands, Latin percussion bands and samba bands to accompany me and a teacher who was brave enough to help me out on stage from time to time. Teachers are more curious about pop and rock styles than they care to admit and anything that can sharpen their awareness of styles is only going to be helpful.

The product session was very well attended indeed and I felt that the work I have done in Minneapolis (see the archived report on my Scmitt Music presentation) and the work both Jon Iverson and Andrew Hisey (my editor on the Connections series) have done have means that people know who I am and have tried some of the series out and have told other teachers that they work.

There was quite a rush to the music dealer’s stand after the session, by which time I was on my way to the airport and back to London.

Thanks to Jill Kilzer for being willing to add me to the programme at short notice. It was great meeting many fine teachers from Minnesota and I hope to see them all again before too long!

Christopher Norton

June 8^th 2011, London, UK

Ackerman Music, Chichester UK - "Play with the Pros"

2011-05-14T16:48:00.000+01:00

Ackerman Music, a UK music dealer with a number of stores in the south of England, bravely decided to run a day called “Play with the Pros”. This involved bringing 5 well-known educational music writers, myself included, to a school in Chichester for a day, with students and teachers offered the chance to have individual tuition or work in group situations.

The other “Pros” were John Kimber, James Rae, Pete Cooper and Mike Cornick, whose names and compositions are well-known to examination candidates and teachers around the world. I was stationed in the school hall:

and my brief was to do improvisation work with a miscellaneous group of instrumentalists. Flutes, clarinets, saxophones, trumpets and trombone were represented, as well as some piano players and both electric and acoustic guitar. I used methodology developed during the writing of American Popular Piano, to good effect I think! We all began by learning a melody – Green Onions initially, then The Girl on the Beach (APP Level 1) and playing each piece as a group, always with backing track. Then, having established the key of the piece, I got the most confident improviser to come up with a catchy one-note (the key note) rhythmic idea (a riff) that all the group could play back. Once everyone felt comfortable playing this riff right through the chord progression, I suggested that the same idea could be played using two notes – typically the first note of the scale and the second. At this point each student was free to choose when to play either note 1 or note 2.

We got as far as using five notes, which happened to be a pentatonic minor or major scale, much to the satisfaction of the electric guitarist, whose hand naturally fell into a pentatonic scale shape.

Then the improvisation started – students were able to invent their own idea, using their own rhythms. But, and it was a big but, they had to be able to play their own idea back again! This is never easy, but it is an important step towards “believing” in your own idea.

We gradually added other techniques – an idea answered by a slight variation of itself, a question and answer idea (two ideas, one different from the other) use of arpeggios, use of repeated notes etc etc. Some of the more confident players stepped up to a microphone and played with the band in a more extended way, using various techniques that we had all tried out.

I also got the chance to show some of the piano players some useful voicings and improvisation tips:

It was a very enjoyable day and I think the students liked playing together as well as having the chance to start improvising in a very step-by-step way. I hope Ackerman Music are encouraged to do it again soon!

Christopher Norton Piano Festival - Toronto, CN

2011-05-13T20:46:00.002+01:00

The series of Christopher Norton Piano Festivals in Canada began in 2003 in Fort McMurray, Alberta and have ranged across the country since, most recently in Victoria (Vancouver Island) This year’s Toronto CN Piano Festival was organised by the person who has been the organiser of a number of these events – Liselotte Jongedijk. Liselotte runs the vibrant Musica Music School in Toronto (www.musicamusicschooltoronto.com) but is also a fantastic organiser of large-scale events. This Piano Festival attracted around 100 children, plus quite a few teachers and was a 2-day event, climaxing in a Gala Concert on the second day.

I alternated group improvisation sessions, using American Popular Piano, with masterclasses. The largest improvisation groups consisted of 11 players, each with a keyboard, including 3 superb new keyboards supplied by Roland Canada – thanks guys! Here’s one of the groups in action:

We ranged from a group of 7 and 8 year olds working from the Preparatory books to an individual class with a teenager, Bethany Super (pictured below left) using the Level 7 books.
As can be seen on the video clips on the American Popular Piano website (www.americanpopularpiano.com) I did group exercises involving both beats and rhythms, then got students to play a set rhythm to a backing track on the keynote of the piece, then on 2 notes, then 3, 4 and 5 notes. They then started to invent (and try to remember!) their own melodies, initially in the set rhythm, then in their own rhythms. All of the students did well and could feel real progress during the sessions. Here’s another of the groups at work – an impressive sight!
The masterclasses were delightful and I was very pleased with the good sounds I was hearing, the accurate rhythm playing and the evident enjoyment of piano playing. Here are some great pictures of the students who took part in the masterclasses:

At the Gala Concert, which was attended by parents as well as students and teachers, some of the most secure performers played their pieces, with me jamming along on one of the Roland pianos. What was unique about this Piano Festival was that each improvisation group played as well, including some improvisation from individuals within the group. It was a happy and relaxed concert and a fitting end to 2 fun days.

Finally, a quote from a parent of two of the student participants:

"I really cannot thank you enough for giving ALL the kids this INCREDIBLE opportunity. Not only did they get to play with Mr.Norton, but they also learned such a unique gift —the Art of Improvisation. Our group from Cobourg had a thoroughly enjoyable experience. The kids laughed and played with Mr. Norton—UNBELIEVABLE! They were learning something and they thought they were just having fun - I cannot thank you enough for a wonderful weekend."

- Susie

European Music Fair - Frankfurt, Germany

2011-04-06T23:03:00.001+01:00

The big European Music Fair is held every year in Frankfurt and I have attended a number of them in recent years. This time it was rather different for me – I had my own section of the Schott Music stand, including my own table and chairs. I’ve finally made it!

This meant I could talk to people very easily and I saw a constant stream of visitors during the days I was there – from Germany, but also from France, Belgium, Denmark, the UK, the Netherlands and yes, Lichtenstein! Most (but by no means all) of the people I spoke to had heard of Microjazz and were very interested to see (and hear) the repackaged books with CDs attached. There were quite a number of teachers and dealers who were interested in American Popular Piano as well and I created lots of openings for workshops and presentations in Europe for both series. These workshops will often be in music schools, but there will also be promotional work to teacher groups and combined presentations with Roland Europe.

This Frankfurt Music Fair was the launch event for the three Microjazz Collections for piano, beautifully repackaged. Microballads was also presented for the first time and a new German-language book, grandly entitled Der Pop-Klavier-Workshop, which will be available in May, was also being pre-sold. This meant 5 new publications were launched, which is quite something in the present climate.

On the Friday night, I provided some entertainment for a large group of music industry guests, including Hal Leonard executives, other publishers and Schott and Boosey & Hawkes staff. It was the official launch of the “Christopher Norton” Roland HPi-6 and HPi-7 pianos – these splendid beasts have a CN button, which unlocks 340 pieces from my entire body of work, including very recent pieces, with great sounding backing tracks and on-screen music display. I used the HPi-7 to play a mixture of Latin, rock and swing pieces for the delectation of the assembled guests, including some audience participation (a duet with the official photographer for the event, a non-pianist!)

I had interesting discussions at the Fair about a Microjazz APP for i-pad, which would initially involve video footage of performances with teaching notes for every piece. And plans were put in place for a Chinese version of American Popular Piano. And of course the big Australian tour in July was discussed further. Watch all these spaces!

MTNA Convention 2011 - Milwaukee, Wisconsin

2011-03-30T23:58:00.001+01:00

MTNA (Music Teachers National Association) is a nonprofit organization of 24000 American independent and collegiate music teachers. Its annual conference has become a fixture in my calendar – this year it was in Milwaukee, home of beer (Millers and Coors are manufactured there) Harley-Davidson and Hal Leonard Music Publishers (my distributors in North America) Located on the shore of Lake Michigan, it has many older-style buildings that give it a grandiose feel.

As with earlier MTNAs, I was there with my colleagues from Novus Via Publishing (http://www.nvmusicgroup.com) Clarke MacIntosh and Scott McBride Smith. We had new publications to publicise – Skills and Technic books for Levels 3-5 of American Popular Piano – and Scott and I also did a presentation bravely entitled “Making Piano Cool – again!” The presentation went very well and I know we made a number of new converts.

The teacher beside me in the photo is Roslyn Weinstein, from Montreal, one of my Facebook friends who keeps up with all I’m doing (and of course helps me to keep up with she’s doing) and is always pleased to meet up at these public events. I saw quite a number of “friends” and even added some while at MTNA.

I feel as though we (Novus Via) are really getting somewhere – many teachers from various parts of the States came up and said that they have been having great success with American Popular Piano. Students like the pieces, the improvisation aspects are proving stimulating and appealing and the skills are working as an instant ear-training and sight-reading tool-kit. Positive reviews and press coverage and helping, but it’s the word-of-mouth aspect that is proving to be the most effective method of spreading the word about the series.

Here’s a picture of me playing with a student of Scott McBride Smith – she is a very good (national level) classical pianist who found sight-reading American Popular Piano ensembles exciting and surprisingly different from anything she’s ever done before.

At the conference, I also arranged to be a guest at the Minnesota annual music teacher conference on the 6th and 7th of June – I have quite a following in Minnesota (hey, somebody has to!) This will be preceded by a major CN Piano Festival in Toronto (May 6th and 7th) and followed by appearances at the MTAC conference in California in late June. America is becoming like a second home!

Toulouse, France

2011-03-18T23:55:00.000Z

Apparently, there are not many French music dealers that are big enough to host a music workshop – LeCroquenotes in Toulouse

(www.croquenotes.com) is one of them, largely because they recently bought the shop next door and therefore have both a sheet music showroom and a little “concert” area next door, including a piano. LeCroquenotes (isn’t that a great name!) is in the heart of Toulouse, a delightfully quaint French town which also happens to be the home of Airbus Industries. Cathy Aubriet was the young, enthusiastic promoter of this workshop, which was billed as How to teach with Microjazz. Here’s Cathy:

Although I haven’t been to France on promotional visits very often, Microjazz has been on the market for so long (28 years!) that it has become quite well-known in France. A number of the teachers at the workshop were familiar with solos and duets from Microjazz and at the beginning of the workshop I was asked to sign what must have been an 1980s edition of Microjazz Duets. A number of the teachers (including their teacher) were from a local Conservatorium and were very interested to hear what publications have appeared since Microjazz. Here is the Toulouse Conservatorium teacher with one of the local teachers:

I began by describing the beginner books – Microjazz for Absolute Beginners and Microjazz for Beginners – with help from one of the teachers acting as my “student” - I played teacher accompaniments to the very easy student parts. I then played a number of pieces from the Microjazz Collections, some with the new, sparkling backing tracks that are included with the new editions. I also showed recent Youtube clips of students playing pieces from the series.

Then I went on to Microstyles, which was a new publication for the group, playing Metal Merchant and In the bag (the latter with enthusiastic help from a non-pianist in the audience) I then went on to talk about the “improvisation” books Improvise Microjazz and The Easiest Way To Improvise. These proved to be of great interest – a desire to learn how to improvise and teach improvisation seems to be universal!

Demonstrations, from me and with video clips from students, of the Concert Collections and Preludes concluded the presentation, along with references to www.christophernortonmidi.com, American Popular Piano and the websites associated with my material. I also referred to the Christopher Norton Piano Festivals, which were of interest to the French teachers as well.

I had a rich Toulouse-style lunch before the workshop (they do like duck products in this part of France!) and the town itself was delightful, with unusual churches a feature. Take a look at this for example:

The reactions to the range of material were very positive and the dealer was very happy! I hope to see my Toulouse teachers again before too long.

Christopher Norton Out West – Los Angeles, Vancouver Island and San Diego

2011-02-15T15:41:00.004Z

CAPMT is the California Association of Professional Music Teachers. It has over 1,000 members teaching throughout the state in independent studios, private and public schools, conservatories, colleges and universities. CAPMT offers a variety of programs for the music student and educational and professional opportunities for its member teachers.

I was honoured to be the Conference Artist at the 2011 CAPMT annual conference, held this year in Whittier, a city in the Los Angeles-Long Beach area. The conference was at Whittier College, a beautiful campus with great music facilities. Here’s what the grounds of Whittier College look like:

I did three sessions back to back, the first one on improvisation, with some young (around 8 years old) students as well as teachers and parents. Using American Popular Piano Level 2 Repertoire and Etudes books, I was able to use a very well-equipped keyboard laboratory to get everyone played together, including the parents! The second session, also focusing on improvisation, was for teachers only and they loved being able to play in a big group and seemed to really like the chance to improvise. My final session was a more theoretical presentation for teachers, talking about the steps required to teach improvisation, steps that we had been experiencing in a practical way in the previous sessions.

A number of teachers were interested in a return visit to California from me, probably to run something along the lines of the improv camps for children that have become my speciality, where improvisation group work and individual master-classes lead to a public concert. When these plans come together, details will be flagged up on both www.christophernorton.com and www.americanpopularpiano.com.

And so to Canada – I flew from LA to Vancouver and then drove to Victoria, Vancouver Island, accompanied by two associates from Conservatory Canada, Victoria Warwick and Paul Coates. Conservatory Canada (www.conservarorycanada.ca) is a fast-growing examination board that has really taken American Popular Piano on board over the last couple of years. I have toured Canada for Conservatory Canada already and I’m sure that I will be doing lots more with them in the future.

The Victoria event was organized by Heather Yaxley, who is an MYC (www.myc.com) teacher. MYC is another organization with which I have close ties and their system and American Popular Piano seem to dovetail nicely, with our books an easy “next step” once children have completed their MYC programme.

Victoria was a 2-day event - a mixture of teacher sessions, improvisation group sessions and masterclasses, with a public concert at the end. The age range was quite wide, and there were some delightful very young students. Here are some pictures of students during the Victoria event:

Master class students:

Improvisation groups:

And American Popular Piano displayed by some of the students at the end of the concert:

I hope to make a return visit to Victoria and there are also plans afoot to stage events in Vancouver and Nanaimo. Watch this space!

My final stop was back in California, at the Recreational Music Center in San Diego (www.recreationalmusiccenter.com) RMC aims, as they put on their promotional material, to “cultivate the joy of making music through relevant and creative teaching methods”. Piano is taught at RMC, but so are bass, guitar and drums and the teachers are all really fine practicing musicians. All ages are catered for and there is a lovely atmosphere created by the very gifted husband-and-wide team who founded RMC, Leslie and David Gereghty. Here’s Lesley:

I started with teacher presentations - an introductory session on American Popular Piano followed by Unlocking Popular Styles, which takes APP pieces and “unpacks” them stylistically. This unique resource is on our website (www.americanpopularpiano.com) and has sound clips and music examples in 20 styles, as well as direct links to songs in similar styles on i-Tunes. I got the teachers to be drummers, with tapping, clapping and beat-box effects - they loved it.

The rest of the two days was taken up partly with improv sessions, with participants as young as 7 and as old as, well I’m not going to say (adults..) All of the participants really enjoyed playing in groups (of 6 Roland HPi-6 keyboards) and nobody missed out on the chance to improvise their own rhythms and melodies to backing tracks. Here are students obviously concentrating hard:

and helping each other:

I also did quite a lot of work on tone production, good hand positions and other technical matters with individuals and with groups and some of the results were startling. One mother said she heard her daughter playing later that day at home and was amazed by the sudden difference in expressiveness and in warmth of sound.

We did two mini-concerts on the second day, which parents attended. There was a really special atmosphere – the children had bonded with each other and with me and there was real joy in all their performances. And their accuracy in timing terms was very striking for the audience. I even got a couple of students to do simple improvisation on the spot and it was clear that the audience found this really quite moving.

Recreational Music Center were very excited by the whole event and we are hoping to arrange a much bigger event, In San Diego, probably before the end of 2011. You can read more at the Recreational Music Center Blog:

http://rmcdg.wordpress.com/2011/02/18/christopher-norton-jazz-workshop-at-rmc/

It was a very positive end to what has been a most rewarding trip out west.

Ackerman Music Opens New Store

2010-12-04T23:17:00.001Z

Ackerman Music opened it's fourth UK store in Brighton and I was there to enjoy the event. Read the full story on Music Instrument Professional's website:

http://www.mi-pro.co.uk/news/31709/Ackerman-Music-opens-new-store

Here are some pictures from the event.

November 2010 Europe Mini Tour

2010-11-24T19:53:00.003Z

Having been a life-long fan of the music of both Grieg and Nielsen, as well as a fan of contemporary Danish cinema (for example Festen, Italian for Beginners and Breaking the waves) I was very pleased to get the chance to do a workshop for the first time in Denmark as well as a conference in Norway.

I flew to Copenhagen from London and then got a train cross-country to Esbjerg, a town in the west of Denmark. The music dealer in Esbjerg was Søren Storm, a former professional violinist who started Aarhus Music a couple of years ago and is, I’m sorry to say, the only specialist sheet music dealer left in Denmark. Here he is (and he is as cheerful and enthusiastic as this picture indicates!)

Denmark, like other Scandinavian countries, has a very effective network of Music Schools - Søren was a graduate of this one in Esbjerg - and the workshop was held in a lovely room on the third floor of the local Music School. I did my usual two-part presentation – introducing Microjazz and other Boosey & Hawkes materials in Part One, introducing American Popular Piano and the whole idea of teaching improvisation in Part Two.

The audience of local teachers were very warm and receptive and were inevitably impressed by my video clips (taken from Youtube) of students playing my music – an Inter-city stomp performance by an 8 year old in China, a very spirited performance of Joshua fought the battle of Jericho (from Concert Collection 2) from a 7 year old in Malaysia. I got warm applause for some of my live performances too – for Jingo from the Rock Preludes Collection and Joy to the World from the Concert Collection in particular. Teachers knew of my material, but were interested to find how much music has been written post-Microjazz. Here is some of my Danish audience during the break, at which point we were all pleased to have (herbal) tea and cakes and a chance to chat informally:

American Popular Piano intrigued the teachers – the use of improvisation in teaching has become of great interest to Danish teachers and the video clips of students playing duets from APP with their teachers were also very effective in demonstrating the virtues of ensemble playing and of the use of contemporary popular styles to encourage better piano playing.

At the end of the Danish presentation, I was taken straight to the airport (no, it’s not what you think!) so that I could get a flight to Bergen and then a transfer to Stavanger, both extremely attractive Norwegian cities. That evening I met the organizers of "Skolemøtet I Rogaland", an annual conference in the Stavanger area for both primary schools and Music Schools. It included 15 whole day workshops and 49 half-day workshops. I was one of the whole day workshops and in fact gave 3 presentations, again one about Microjazz, another on American Popular Piano and a third on Unlocking Popular Styles. The last one mentioned helps to make it easier for teachers to identify modern popular styles by looking at drum and percussion parts, bass parts and piano parts, all based on pieces from American Popular Piano. Roland Europe are including Unlocking Popular Styles in their new range of HP pianos and the APP website also features a very easy-to-follow version of the presentation, with lots of sound clips and music examples. Here are some of my Norwegian audience, again very warm, supportive and enthusiastic:

My music was familiar to many of the teachers – indeed, one of them had even sent to Canada for the Connections series (not presently available in Europe) and was amazed to actually meet a composer whose work he had used successfully for many years.

When I went onto the improvisation materials and APP, one of the teachers, formerly from Romania, proved to be a wonderful improviser and he proved how effective improvisation on the pieces from APP can be. We also had a lively discussion about the best way to start students improvising, which will probably continue on-line! Here he is playing, to the delight of the other participants:

Isn’t that a great look of concentration?

My third presentation, Unlocking Popular Styles, included lots of audience participation and was enjoyed by all. The teachers all took note of the websites that represent my work – www.christophernorton.com, www.americanpopularpiano.com and www.youtube.com/user/christophermicrojazz.

I then flew back to the UK for a couple of days before getting the Eurostar to Paris, where I put in a guest appearance at a Paris music fair called Music & You. It was held at the Grande Halle de la Villete. The entrance to the music fair pictured below;

The fair showcased the full range of musical instruments, including woodwind and brass, acoustic guitars, accordions and of course keyboards, synthesizers and electric guitars. Sheet music publishers and distributors were also there. It was very noisy, especially with a rock guitarist playing opposite the Schott stand more or less on the hour! However, we had relative quiet during the time I played, using a Roland piano and the new backing tracks from the Microjazz Collections, as well as pieces from MicroRock, the Concert Collection 2 and Latin Preludes. Here I am beside, erm, a big picture of myself on the stand:

A number of teachers came to speak to me during the course of the afternoon and I was pleased to find quite a few already familiar with Microjazz. This was a lot more informal than the sessions in Scandinavia, but it did indicate that with the right material you can literally draw people in aurally. I will do a workshop in Toulouse early in 2011 and also hope to back in Paris before long.

Christopher Norton Festival, Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada

2010-10-24T21:00:00.005+01:00

I visited Fredericton, New Brunswick on the Connections tour back in 2007 and met Wendy Beardall, who has been President of the Fredericton Music Teachers Association (FMTA) and who continues to be a positive and lively presence in this delightful town on the St John river. Wendy invited me to come back to preside over a Fredericton-based Christopher Norton Piano Festival and opted, along with her enthusiastic, nay visionary committee, for a 3-day event.

Day 1 started with a “Meet Christopher Norton” event sponsored by the local high school. Music students from Fredericton High School and Leo Hayes High School came and heard me talk about my work as a composer and heard me play a number of pieces. Here are some of the entirely typical teenage audience:

This went very well and at the end of the session there was some spare time, so I selected 10 students from the larger group and got them to come on stage, where there were coincidentally 10 keyboards set up. Before they knew what was happening I was teaching them a chord progression (Stray Dog Blues from Microrock) and then getting them all to have a go at improvising on it.
This led neatly to what was the “official” second session of the day – a group of 10 students from FHS came up on stage and played Clean sweep from American Popular Piano Level 6, then went through the Improvisation Etudes based on that piece. We got some very good results and everyone had a chance to shine during the course of an intense but rewarding session.

The entire afternoon of day 1 was work with other improvisation groups, ranging in age from about 9 years old through to late teenagers. All of the pieces used were from American Popular Piano. The students seemed to enjoy this a lot and a number of the most confident players came to the grand piano and did their solos on a much louder instrument, the others all playing along on the relatively quiet keyboards.

Day 2 was masterclasses from 9 am until nearly 5.30. The students were grouped by age and I was very impressed by the overall standard, as well as by their willingness to try my suggestions out, in public! The youngest group were all so good I chose every one of them to come and play in the evening Gala concert.

There were groups of students throughout the day, each one an older age group than the last. The final group was in many ways the bravest – adults, some of whom had come back to the piano relatively recently. Here is one of my adult students at work:

And a testimonial from one of the adult students:

Thank you for a beyond-fabulous experience with my students this past weekend in Fredericton, New Brunswick! I haven't played a piano solo for over 15 years - but you quickly put me at ease! Every student left feeling excited about the piano, the music and the fact that they met someone they can look up to! My son is still telling everyone about his weekend with Mr. Norton. It's something none of us will forget any time soon! - Irma Mulherin

After a break, during which we got photos of the individual master class participants onto a Keynote presentation ready for the Gala Concert, we repaired to the Charlotte Street Arts Centre in the city centre. The children performed brilliantly and the capacity crowd were enthusiastic and both moved and astounded by many of the performances. I played along on a second keyboard, something the students had not heard before the concert. I’ve done many concerts of this kind now, but this was definitely one of the best – there was a lot of audience participation and a really joyful atmosphere was in evidence throughout.

Day 3 started with a breakfast with some of the local teachers, then a session called How To Incorporate Improvisation Into Lessons, which was held in the home of Margaret MacDonald, the local FMTA President. This proved to be very useful, as it was quite hands-on and it seemed a fitting end to the weekend, as it reinforced many things that had come up in the group improv sessions.

My thanks again to Wendy and Megan Woodworth and the committee for organising the event so well, to Fredericton High School for the use of the school hall, to the Fredericton Music Society for the use of the Church of the Nazarene for masterclasses and to Tony’s Music Box for the loan of the piano for the concert. It was a very positive event and will definitely be repeated.

Hornchurch, Essex; Organized by Advance Music

2010-10-03T13:06:00.002+01:00

Advance Music is one of the biggest suppliers of printed music, musical instruments and accessories in East London, Essex, Kent, Barking and the southeast of England. This, unusually, was a Sunday morning workshop and it was held actually in the store. A good-sized and enthusiastic group of teachers turned up for a 9.30 am start and were treated to a game of two halves – a presentation on the Microjazz series and related Boosey & Hawkes books, as well as a presentation called Unlocking Popular Styles, which featured American Popular Piano.

Advance Music had an impressive display of my music for people to look at:

All of the teachers knew about Microjazz, but many were unaware of the Microstyles Collection, the Concert Collections and the Preludes Collections. I played pieces from these, as well as from the new “Micro” books (MicroLatin, MicroRock and MicroSwing)

I also showed clips culled from Youtube of my pieces played by students from China, Canada and the Czech Republic – this was of course of great interest to the audience.

I played some easier pieces from the Microjazz Collections, like Struttin’ and Intercity stomp, I then got splendid help from a teacher with the repeated left hand part of In the Bag from the Microstyles Collection. I played Dreaming On from the Rock Preludes Collection (a set piece for Grade 5 for the ABRSM this year) and I finally played some more difficult pieces, like Turkey in the Straw and Joy to the World from the Concert Collection. Here is me in my usual “blissed out” performing mode – yes, my eyes are closed!

I also told teachers to visit www.christophernorton.com and also to look at my new Youtube channel – www.youtube.com/profile/christophermicrojazz. The Pianist magazine profile and series of articles on popular piano styles was also mentioned (www.pianistmagazine.com)

Lots of books were perused and bought during an excellent morning tea break, which included delicious shortbread (I can vouch for that!)

In Part 2, I gave a quick over-view of American Popular Piano, then launched into Unlocking Popular Piano. This was a live version of what is now available to peruse on www.americanpopularpiano.com - 20 popular piano styles “unpacked”. I had the teachers clapping, “drumming” and vocalizing drum parts and this practical approach helped many of them to understand what the styles feel like to play as well as to listen to. Here is part of the audience, very attentive!

I also touched on the difficulty in the modern world of keeping piano students motivated and how important it is to try to give them music they can relate to and to encourage improvisation without too much theory getting in the way, at least in the early stages. This was the first time the teachers in Hornchurch had ever heard of American Popular Piano, so it was quite a lot for them to take in, but I felt the essence of the series – learning to enjoy playing through using contemporary popular styles, ensemble playing (including tracks) and step-by-step improvisation – was clear by the end of the presentation.

Thanks again to Colin Freeman at Advance Music for being prepared to put this event on. I hope to get back at some point and see how teachers are getting on with all these new ideas!

Summer Sizzle, Mt Forest Ontario

2010-07-25T16:08:00.000+01:00

Summer Sizzle, 10 years old in 2010, is a growing piano pedagogy symposium for teachers and students sponsored by CNCM (www.cncm.ca). Held in the peaceful country setting of Mount Forest, ON, Summer Sizzle helps bring music and culture to rural educators and musicians while offering urban professionals a chance to further learning in a relaxed environment. Over 200 participants attend this annual event, which offers several specialized workshops led by international experts, launches new Canadian pieces with composers in attendance, hosts public concerts showcasing visiting composers, guest experts, teachers and students and boasts a full music trade show.

Summer Sizzle includes a complete three-day Keyboard Kamp for students aged 8 to 21.Keyboard Kamp offers students master classes taught by experts ranging in subject matter from composition to overcoming stage fright.

This was my third year at Summer Sizzle and I had a very full programme – master-classes with many students, group improvisation classes and a Gala Concert, as well as two presentations to teachers.

I felt the students had really come on – there was lots of expressive playing and the understanding of contemporary popular styles seemed to have come on by leaps and bounds.Here’s a group of my students after a master class:

The improvisation groups went very well – the students enjoyed playing in ensemble, liked trying to create their own melodies and were ready to try ideas out. Here’s a group at work:

And the concert was, as they often are, a moving and sometimes startling affair – children played with great conviction and with real feeling. The audience could tell something special was happening. There were standout performances – Jingo from the Rock Preludes done as a tight two piano piece (the student and me) a beautiful rendition of Beguine from Latin Preludes and a sleek version of Positively swinging from Connections being particular highlights. Here’s a student at the concert:

What a look of relaxed concentration! (The student, the student..)

I really enjoyed meeting other Canadian composers at this event – the three women representing Red Leaf Pianoworks(www.redleafpianoworks.ca), Clifford Crawley, Remi Bouchard and Tyler Sydenberg. I feel like an honorary Canadian – and how often do you hear anyone say that?

MTAC, Los Angeles and Yamaha Music Camp, Banff and MYC Convention Banff

2010-07-25T15:54:00.000+01:00

MTAC (Music Teachers Association of California) www.mtac.org holds a convention every year in late June/early July. The venue alternates between Northern California and Southern California – this year it was in Los Angeles. The convention features presentations by internationally and nationally known artists and lecturers, materials from well-known pedagogues, master-classes for all instruments and voice, and a showcase for outstanding students at all levels.

I was there with Novus Via Publishing, representing the American Popular Piano series (www.americanpopularpiano.com) I spoke to lots of teachers about the series, particularly the Improvisation aspects. There was strong interest and of course some of the teachers were already “in the programme” and were telling me how they have been getting on with it. Scott (McBride Smith) and I did a presentation on APP together, which is always fun. He is tall…

Two other highlights of the MTNA conference – I had to stand in for Philip Keverin and comment on compositions from MTAC student prize-winners. I found this fascinating – the pieces were quite sophisticated and of a good length and the performances of them were very competent indeed. A tendency to be over-complex was noted and the language was often Prokofiev/Shostakovich in influence, but without those composers’ willingness to state a simple tune without continual embellishment. I think the young composers found my comments useful and the audience was certainly willing to admit that there were certain longeurs in the pieces as well as some really stunning moments.

The other session was a re-working of a session I first did at Summer Sizzle in Ontario last year, called The Norton Code. This was a quick guide to “spotting” popular styles, with all of the examples culled from American Popular Piano. I got the audience to take part in various ways – being a giant beat-box being one of them. I had an excellent sight-reader and player helping me – Joanna Ezrin (sister of a famous Canadian record producer) and the session created a great wave of interest that meant the APP stand was suddenly very busy! Sound clips and sheet music from that presentation will go onto www.americanpopular piano.com shortly.

And so to Canada, where I took part in a bi-annual Yamaha music camp for young composers aged 6 to 15 years. I ran sessions for children and teachers on how I compose and how they might get better results with their own compositions. I also did some work on improvisation. The students were lively and great fun to be with and I think they liked having someone from such a different stylistic world. Here are some of my young students:

On the 10^th July there was a concert featuring the students performing their own compositions. Many of these were semi-classical, but performed very well (and quite impressive in length) At the top end there were a number of stunning compositions that really were amazing from composers and performers so young.

Next to Banff, where I was at the bi-annual MYC (Music for Young Children) www.myc.com Convention. I wasn’t there to present this time – I had been commissioned to write a piece to celebrate the retirement of Frances and Gunars Balodis, the founders of MYC. Last time I saw them, I was at their lake house in Ontario and after dinner they sang a touching duet together. I wrote a piece for the final Gala called At the Lake, which incorporated me and Olivia Riddell (their daughter) on two pianos, David Riddell (their son-in-law) and Frank Berg (an MYC co-ordinator) on Roland Lucinas, 3 percussionists and a choir stationed at the back of the hall, who came in near the end singing the chorus of the song I had heard at the lake house. It came across as a low-key and indeed heartfelt tribute to Frances and Gunars and the 30 years they have worked on building up MYC. Here are Frances and Gunars after the performance:

I also went to a gig in Banff by Danny Rebel and The KGB, with Fabulous LoLo, a Canadian singer (aka Lorraine Muller aka The Queen of Ska), who sang with the Kingpins, a ska band from Montréal, for many years. It was a great gig at Wild Bills, a country and western-themed pub round the corner from the Convention.

The MYC network is big, with over 24,000 students and 9000 teachers spread across 3 continents. I have a piece from APP, London Waltz, in one of their publications and I have realized that their programme dovetails nicely with APP. So I hope to spend more time with MYC teachers and students in the coming years.

Ontario/Manitoba Tour – Toronto, Ontario

2010-05-08T21:02:00.001+01:00

The final event on this Canadian mini-tour was in Toronto. The superb organizers of the entire tour were Simon and Liselotte Jongedijk.

Liselotte was also responsible for the Toronto event and it was another two full days of improvisation groups, master classes and a Gala Concert.

In addition, on the morning of day 1, I co-presented, together with Clarke MacIntosh - President of Novus Via Music Group, publishers of American Popular Piano (www.americanpopularpiano.com), at the Music for Young Children (www.myc.com) teachers’ meeting for the Central Ontario area.

Clarke kicked off with a talk about why and how APP – as it has become known – came to pass, with references to the history of the RCM in Canada and his time at Frederick Harris Music. I then took over and talked about how MYC activities, with their emphasis on group work and composing, can move seamlessly to the Preparatory level in the APP series. I got some teachers to come up and did simple group improvisation work with them, which they enjoyed and related to very well. Here are the MUSICA-MYC teachers who were all present at that event - MUSICA Music School, along with Novus Via Music Group, was the promoter of this Spring 2010 Tour, with generous assistance from Music for Young Children in Kanata, as well as local sponsors at each of the various events; you can see Frank Berg, Central Ontario Area coordinator for Music for Young Children, standing in the background:

After lunch, I made my way to the Salvation Army North Toronto Community Church on Eglinton Avenue and enjoyed nearly two days of improvisation groups and master classes, with a superb final Gala Concert. The Gala concert included an impressive performance of Samba III from my Latin Preludes Collection by 6 year old Catharine He, which, accompanied by live drums, can be seen at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CH8dUx4Ucxk

Here is a group of young Improvisers at work on Rockin’ in the Aisles:

Here I am playing a duet with one of the younger performers.
And here’s a picture of one of the outstanding student performers in Toronto (and indeed of the tour), Shikara Fahie, who performed Rainforest from Connections 3. This is Shikara’s third year in the Norton event in Toronto. Good hand position there Shikara!

As in other centres, a few of the Toronto students brought me their own compositions for constructive criticism. I was happy to include some of those compositions in our Gala Concert.

The entire Toronto event – master classes, improvisation groups and Gala Concert - was professionally filmed by Lennox White of Otima Media Productions (www.otimamediaproductions.ca) and will be cut into a soon-to-be available DVD (details from musica88@rogers.com). More information will be posted on this website when the DVD is ready. Apart from capturing some excellent master class and Gala Concert performances as well as some great attempts at improvisation, the film will also feature many of the students being interviewed about their experiences as newbie improvisers and these interviews will also be part of the final cut.

Comments from Toronto:

From Matthew, a student:

The Christopher Norton Improvisational Class was enjoyable because you got to make up your own tunes. It inspired me to want to write my own compositions. I was nervous at first of making mistakes, but there were lots of people in the group. Christopher Norton was very funny, although not everyone got his jokes... but I did! The Master class was also fun because I made no mistakes! Christopher Norton was helpful and encouraging. He almost made me want to practice more!

General comments:

The master classes at all the events raised a number of issues that are worth listing here:

1. Make sure you have all the right notes and the correct rhythms under your fingers before you come to a Master Class! Aim to play your pieces in time and aim for accurate articulation and always make a nice sound!

2. Try to play with curved fingers rather than straight fingers.

3. If a piece includes pedaling, try to pedal the left hand first, with as much of the legato as you can manage “in your hand”. Then play the right hand melody without pedal, with fingers doing as much of the work (in legato terms) as possible. Only then put hands together.

4. Use a graceful down up movement of the wrist to play 2-note slurs.

5. Use a flexible wrist and judicious arm-weight to both shape phrases and to create round-toned accents and staccato.

6. Don’t try to reach for the next position when playing something like a staccato ragtime left hand part. Use the dropping on one note to act as a springboard to a drop on the next note, however far away it is.

7. Don’t look at your left hand if it’s playing an accompaniment figure – it will always be in danger of being too loud!

8. Aim for the physical movements you make to be reflected in the sound you make – so no unnecessary sliding of the fingers after you’ve played or sudden jerks upward of the wrist. And no twisting of the wrist to get to a black note!

9. Try and incorporate playing by ear, improvising and composing into your regular practice sessions.

10. Aim to perform confidently in public – this is achieved in part by making use of every opportunity to perform in public.

There’s a start students!

The whole of this tour has been most rewarding, with the double emphasis on playing better and improvising proving to be a potent

and congruent combination. I enjoyed meeting many of the teachers in the various centres and look forward to seeing many of the same students next time I am invited to your cities and towns.

Tour managers Simon and Liselotte Jongedijk of MUSICA Music School in Leaside, Toronto, cannot be congratulated enough for their vision of how it might be and for their ability to then carry it through triumphantly.

Should you wish to host a Norton event in Ontario next year (in late April/early May) please do not hesitate to contact Liselotte Jongedijk at musica88@rogers.com

Au revoir Canada – I hope to see you all again soon!

Ontario/Manitoba Tour – Kingston, Ontario

2010-05-06T20:48:00.006+01:00

The event in Kingston, Ontario was extremely well organised by Brooke Woboditsch, an RCM graduate who has gradually embraced progressive ideas about teaching improv and who also plays popular piano and saxophone herself.

Her delightful daughter Jasmine was one of the most enthusiastic participants at both an improv session and a master class:

The master classes were a joy, with well-prepared students playing with great enthusiasm and immediately raising their game. One aspect which made Kingston very special was the presence of two gifted young brothers, Alexander and Leonid Nediak, who not only played very well (Leo, aged just 6, played Hot Day from Connections 8, a Grade 8 piece) but who also performed their own very striking compositions. Here’s Leo in action:

From time to time I hear really artistic performances and Kingston was no exception – Emma Dignam played a deeply felt and beautiful-sounding version of Waltz for Elaine from Connections 8. The audience were captivated by her expressive performance:

An innovative aspect of the Kingston event was a master class for adult performers, who were surprisingly nervous but acquitted themselves very well. The local organizer, Brooke, (second from the right in this picture of the Teacher Workshop) also participated in the adult master class later on in the day.

And here is one of my adult students in Kingston:The mixture of activities in Kingston was great – improv groups alternating with master classes, classes for students and for adults and some student compositions. Here is the youngest improv group in action:

Once again, the Gala Concert was a pleasure to host and a delight for parents and teachers in attendance. Here’s one of my youngest students being tutored in preparation for the concert:

Isn’t that a wonderfully concentrated look on his face?

Here’s a link to a newspaper article on the event (front page!): http://www.thewhig.com/ArticleDisplay.as px?archive=true&e=2566049

Comments from Kingston:

From a student – who claims to be Christopher Norton's no. 1 fan and who drove 2 hours to attend the workshops:

Dear Mr Norton: I really appreciated being able to play for you and the people at the concert. I missed the time that you came to Ottawa. I wish that all I played were your songs. My biggest wish is that I wish to play all of your songs by the end of my life. The point is that you are my favourite composer and I wish that you would never stop writing songs. Sincerely, John

From Brooke, the local organizer:

The event has come to an end and I must say it surpassed my expectations. Mr. Norton was inspiring to me, the students and to those teachers who were able to come and watch the workshops. The most surprising part for me is the inspiration that came from the performances of some of the students. What a treat it was to hear so many wonderful performances.

Manitoba/Ontario Tour - Peterborough, Ontario

2010-05-03T20:37:00.001+01:00

Peterborough was a new stop on this tour. In prior years, students from Peterborough had chosen to travel to events in Toronto, Sunderland or Kingston. The local organiser was Karen Lander, a member of the Peterborough Branch of the Ontario Registered Music Teachers’ Association (ORMTA), whose calming presence helped to make this event a particular pleasure.

Day One began with a teacher presentation grandly entitled How Do You Work Improvisation into Lessons? Starting with references to great composers of the past who were also great improvisers (Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin, Liszt…) I outlined the benefits that improvisation can bring to both teachers and students. I then took a very simple (one-note!) idea and showed how easily it can be extended into a longer piece. Various teachers came up and invented new ideas on the spot for me, which I then continued, even completed, with input from the whole group. I also introduced the idea of starting a piece with a rhythm or with a chord progression rather than a melody. We then moved onto some American Popular Piano pieces that have associated Improv Etudes and I got the group to do the various clapped and played ideas that almost inevitably lead to improvisation.
The teachers who stayed on for the student improv sessions immediately found the whole process much more comprehensible and engaging, as they saw students grappling with exactly the same concepts with which they had just been grappling. Here are some of the student groups during very happy and productive Improv sessions:

As in the other venues, apart from the group improv sessions with keyboard groups, there were master classes and a final Gala Concert, which had a really special atmosphere as a result of all the work that had preceded it – the audience were amazed by the combination of happiness and concentration in the performers.

Comments from Peterborough:

From students: This was great, this was awesome, we would definitely do this again.

From a Peterborough parent:

The Gala showed what the children accomplished with this remarkable composer/teacher and musician in such a short time. It was great to see the way he addressed the different levels of students and the general format of the workshop/Master Class and gala was excellent. There were many happy parents and students at the end of the Gala and many pictures taken and many books autographed by Christopher. That is an indication of the respect and enjoyment the children and parents had for the man and the workshops.

From Peterborough Teachers:

I was happy to see how easy it would be to use the resources I already have in my studio to improve sight reading and ear training as well as improvisation. It was a very constructive workshop for teachers.

The highlight of the Norton Improv workshops was to be present and see what the kids learned in the workshops. He took them from just learning the rhythms into a fun way with rhythms, an easy entry to making up their own little compositions, and improving their musical memory in an easy and fun way. I can hardly wait to get started with these new ideas. I did not see one sad face leaving any workshop.

From Karen, the local organizer:

Thank you for planning and promoting the Christopher Norton tour, and for giving Peterborough the opportunity to host this event. We are very proud to have offered such a unique and inspiring experience to local music students.

Manitoba/Ontario Tour - Sunderland ON

2010-05-01T15:51:00.001+01:00

Sunderland, Ontario was the first “return” visit of the tour – during last year’s master class tour, Sunderland was one of the one-day venues (you can see the report on it in the blog archive) but this year Sunderland offered the new format of a two-day event. The local organizer once again was Kim Schneider, who did a great job this year as well. Here is a picture of Kim in her studio, together with her children, Liselotte Jongedijk (one of the tour managers), and me:

We started the two-day event off in a very different way – more than twenty djembe drummers, the R H Cornish Public School “Mini Explosion” Group from Port Perry (in fact the full Grade 4 French Immersion Class with their teacher Suzanne Garriock) were waiting for me and we had a workshop involving all of the drummers. They played for me first, making a great sound and also looking fantastic in their colourful costumes:
The drummers were led by a rock-solid djinn djinn drum player throughout, and after everyone played together, four drummers each provided a rhythm for the others (now split into four groups) to follow. Once I had the procedure clear, I got them to create 4 rhythms to Toledo from American Popular Piano Level 2, one of the pieces being used for improvisation work. At the Gala Concert, Toledo was played as the final piece, with the drummers and the keyboard group all playing together. A great sound! Here is the drumming group on stage, practising for the final concert.

Once again, some good work had gone in on solo pieces for the master classes and we had some assured, accurate and expressive performances at the Gala Concert. Sunderland was the first full two-day event, so there was a fully rounded experience for the young performers, thinking hard about piano playing and piano technique one day, starting to improvise the next. I felt the combination of activities was very good for musicianship – students were starting to think about the sounds they were making, but were also more aware of playing with other people and with having an aural image of what they were about to play. The effect on students’ enthusiasm for music and confidence as performers was sometimes quite dramatic.

Here is a picture of some of the students improvising during the Breakfast Time improv group in Sunderland:

Kim Schneider’s son Dillon received a private piano lesson with me as a 10th birthday present – which he seemed to enjoy very much!

I was also pleased to see quite a few teenage boys performing, often very well. Look at the concentration on this student’s face during one of the master classes:

Congratulations to the many students who took part in this event, and to Kim Schneider for mounting such an extravaganza and for giving us the opportunity to stay in a delightful early nineteenth century log cabin B&B.

Comments from Sunderland:

From Wells (14-yr old student): “When I got to the Town Hall my sister's class was pounding away on the keys and I was amazed at what I was hearing and seeing from about eight spectacular young musicians. The minute I saw what Chris was doing I knew I had made the right decision. Chris is not only an amazing composer but also one of the coolest guys I have ever met. Chris gave me a new insight on piano. He showed me new techniques and some great improvisation tricks. The Chris Norton workshop was an absolutely amazing experience and I will definitely do it again.”

From Gareth (student): “This spring, at my piano lesson on a Tuesday morning, I learned that I was going to attend an improv class and a master class with none other than Mr. Norton. I was very excited.

For the master class, I spent a few weeks preparing one of Mr. Norton's

songs. Several weeks later, I travelled to Sunderland to attend the class. When my name was called, I went up onto the stage with Mr. Norton. I played my song for him, he gave me some really useful tips, and then he asked me to play it again. The second time round, Mr. Norton played with me - it was great.

I was then asked to perform at the 'gala' concert that night, which really

put the icing on the cake on an amazing day. Mr. Norton accompanied

everybody, and it was so interesting to see how the partnership and

support he gave made people's playing come to life even more. Thank you, Mr. Norton, for making it all so much fun and so worthwhile.”

Manitoba/Ontario Tour - Winnipeg MB

2010-04-29T15:42:00.001+01:00

Winnipeg was a late addition to the tour, but proved to be a memorable occasion, thanks in no small part to the enthusiasm and organizational abilities of local teacher Terri Myers. Terri and her 2 sons recently became local celebrities, having shed something in the order of 180 lbs between them in three months, as part of a local radio promotion called (ain’t it sweet!) Winnipeg’s Biggest Loser (http://winnipegsbiggestloser.com). Here is a picture of the extremely svelte Winnipeg organizer (that’s her on the right!):

The students in Winnipeg were well prepared and very enthusiastic and we all had a great time, particularly with the improvisation sessions. Here’s a picture of one of the Improv groups playing:The first day saw both Improv sessions and master classes and ended with a lovely wine-and-cheese party at the beautiful home of our hosts Art and Leona Defehr (http://www.furnituretoday.com/article/22161-Art_DeFehr_Businessman_and_humanitarian.php) Given that there were a large number of musicians present, of course there was music making (and improvisation!) on the spur of the moment – as can be seen in this picture of the organizer, Terri Myers, together with our host Art Defehr and composer Zane Zalis (http://www.zanezalis.com), with me playing a little night music.
Here I am playing a breakfast duet with our gracious hostess Leona Defehr (my eyes closed in a combination of bliss and jet-lag):
The second day again offered Improv sessions and master classes. On the whole, there were lots of really outstanding performances in Winnipeg, and the lunchtime Gala Concert had a palpable air of excitement about it, partly because I had to get to the airport for a 3.30 pm flight! Here are the improvisers on stage during the Gala Concert:
And a student performer in action – many students came to the piano smiling and got up from their performance still smiling. Wonderful!
Comments from Winnipeg:

From Ryan (Level 3 student): “I found it very fun by being up on stage for the Improv class because I like the way that Christopher Norton taught me. In the Master class I learned not to tilt my hand but keep it straight. I really enjoyed the whole workshop. It was a lot of fun!”

From Nancy (parent of a participating student): “The Christopher Norton workshops were a wonderful experience for both myself and Gordon...he was a little nervous at first but as soon as he got started with Mr. Norton he fit right in and had a great learning experience. It is so nice that this opportunity was made available to my son...it will be two great days that he will always remember. He still is playing songs from the repertoire book and listening to the CD.”

From Suzanne (Teacher): “I was a little apprehensive signing up a student for the workshop as I wasn’t sure what to expect. I wasn’t disappointed. Christopher Norton has certainly inspired the imagination of many students. I went away from the workshop filled with new ideas and a much better understanding of improvisation. He has found the key in keeping piano students motivated while keeping the fun in playing. The gala concert was wonderful and showcased so much talent. The students are inspired and feel so accomplished!”

From Terri, the local organizer: “In summary, the tour to Winnipeg was phenomenal! THANK YOU SO MUCH!”

Ontario/Manitoba Tour - Huntsville ON

2010-04-26T15:40:00.001+01:00

Huntsville, Ontario is located two hours north of Toronto in beautiful “cottage country”. It’s a vibrant waterfront community of 18,000 residents. The primary commercial centre for northern Muskoka, it boasts great shopping, restaurants, pubs, world-class golf and live entertainment (including, on this occasion, yours truly). We were given a taste of warm Muskoka hospitality on the Sunday evening preceding the tour at the Lake House of Frances and Gunars Balodis, en route to our first stop in Hunstville.

This most enjoyable one-day event was organized by Frank Berg, who is not only an excellent local teacher, but also acts as an area coordinator for Music for Young Children (www.myc.com), one of Canada’s most striking educational music success stories. The event comprised improvisation sessions, master classes and a final Gala Concert. Below you can see me in action with one of the improvisation groups. On the left of the picture is local organizer Frank Berg, with his daughter Sophie on his lap. You should be able to spot him because of his distinctive yellow MYC shoes!

The format I used this time was different from my 2009 Ontario tour, which consisted of master classes and a Gala Concert. Using both Repertoire pieces and Improvisation Etudes from the American Popular Piano series (www.americanpopularpiano.com) which the students had practiced in the months leading up to the tour, I got the student keyboard groups (typically 8-12 players) to play the original piece, without and then with the backing track. I then guided the group step by step towards simple improvisation, starting with a clapped beat, then a clapped rhythm (both to the track). Next I got all of the group to play the rhythm they had just clapped using the key note of the piece, before asking each individual student to create a 2-note melody in the same rhythm, then a 3-note melody, leading up to using all of the notes suggested in the Improvisation Etude book. This was immediately making everybody listen to themselves, as it became clear that certain notes (at certain times) sounded particularly good with the track.

Once the students were all comfortable with inventing their own melodies to a set rhythm, I got each player to make up their own melody, using any of the notes already played (in any order). They were free to use either the set rhythm or rhythms of their own – and most began to choose their own. Each player was immediately asked to repeat whatever melody they had just played, which proved surprisingly difficult at first, as most beginner improvisers don’t pay much attention to what they are actually playing! Once everyone had done this successfully, I got them to repeat their melody with a slight variation (eg the final note changed) and we were immediately on our way to coherent melodic structures. With the track constantly playing, the students got more and more confident and we ended up with question and answer melodies as well as free-form melodies being invented by every player. I then suggested using grace notes, tremolo, 2 note chords and other devices that helped to make their improvisations sound more idiomatic.

Everyone went away better able to play with a track, to play with an ensemble and to do simple but effective improvisation using a variety of melodic structures. Most of the students said that they would be happy to continue exploring improv back at home.

Older students practiced left hand chords from the Etudes with the track and began to feel how great it can feel to improvise with their right hand while playing left hand chords.

It was effective working with group improvisation and Huntsville was the first place that I got to try out this new format.

The master classes were held on the same day and it was very good to be able to work with individual students who had become familiar faces and names (and personalities!) during the earlier group improvisation sessions.

Here’s one of the Huntsville students during a master class:

You can read a number of observations about master classes in my report on Toronto, the final stop on this tour.

The Gala Concert was a very happy occasion – the most assured students played, often with me, while some group improvisation was also demonstrated. The parents and teachers in attendance felt that lots of good things had already come out of the day’s work and seemed optimistic that the long-term effects would be very positive.

Hertfordshire County Music Service

2010-04-13T15:13:00.001+01:00

Herts County Music Service is the largest county music service in the UK and this was billed as a talk on my life as a composer. The title I gave the presentation was “From Microjazz to Ringtones” and I began by talking about my early days as a composer and performer in New Zealand, with video and audio snippets from my Trio for 2 violins and piano and Quintet for 4 violins and piano. I then described how life as a high school music teacher in New Zealand (fortunately) coincided with a developing interest in popular music, although the first publications of mine to appear after I came to the UK in 1977 were all Christmas books! Microjazz followed shortly after (in 1983) and its success has enabled me to continue to work in a variety of music-related spheres – recording, midi file production, background music albums, tv music and ringtones! I described the range of other Boosey & Hawkes publications as well – Microstyles, Essential Guides, Preludes, Concert Collections, Big Beats, The Easiest Way To Improvise and the new editions of Microjazz with audio files (about to come out)

Here are some of the teachers listening to me perform pieces from one of the above series:

This was all interesting to the teachers and they could tell that some of the areas I work in are potential areas of future work for their students. Most of them had also used Microjazz pieces at some stage – one teacher there even claimed that Microjazz was the reason she was still in the music profession!

But the second part of the presentation was where the audience’s interest was really piqued – I introduced American Popular Piano and demonstrated, with the help of a teacher (who claimed not to be an improviser) how this revolutionary series can teach modern popular styles through reading music, but can also lead to improvisation, using an easy-to-follow, step-by-step approach that can be applied to a variety of situations. I showed video clips of Canadian children working on improvisation in groups and clips of young children playing with other players, including their teachers of course, as well as with tracks. Here is my Herts student-for-the-day at work:

The teachers were very interested in both the materials (right across the board) and even more in the methodology that might allow the music to be used in more free-ranging ways and there was keen interest in the display of books:

The books positively glow don’t they!

This was a very positive occasion and many teachers came to speak to me afterwards - there is definitely an interest in a return visit from me, to work with string, woodwind and brass players as well as with keyboard groups.

Thanks to Tom Stewart for putting this event on and to Herts County Music Service.

Frankfurt Messe 2010

2010-03-30T12:34:00.008+01:00

The Frankfurt Messe is an annual international fair for musical instruments, sheet music and music business connections. I was there representing Boosey & Hawkes, Novus Via and my new digital ventures, www.christophernortonmidi.com and www.fourhandsplus.com. I was stationed at the big, very impressive Schott Music stand. Here's "my" part of it"

I spoke to quite a few teachers. They were all familiar with Microjazz and were interested to see the new Guide to Microjazz and the repackaged Collections with CD tracks added. Here are 2 of the people I spoke to, holding the new Guide:

Apart from talking to teachers I was also asked to play for a reception that was celebrating the 250th anniversary of Schott Music. A special treble clef-shaped pretzel was baked for the occasion:

And here's me at the piano, using a Roland HPi6, which contains 50 Microjazz pieces as part of its software. I look suitably rapt, although it could be the effect of jet-lag (New Mexico to London to Frankfurt)

Two colleagues were with me at Frankfurt, Clarke MacIntosh from Novus Via and Lydia Machell from Prima Vista. Her company has made all of American Popular Piano available in Braille - an exciting new development! Here they are at the fair:

MTNA 2010

2010-03-29T17:17:00.014+01:00

The MTNA - Music Teachers' National Association (http://www.mtna.org) was founded in 1876 by Theodore Presser in Delaware, Ohio. Its aim then, as now, was to advance the value of music study and music making to society and to support the professionalism of music teachers.

The 2010 MTNA was in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Numbers were down from last year - the economic downturn being the major factor - but it was a very worthwhile convention for me and my colleagues from Novus Via Music (www.nvmusicgroup.com)

I first attended MTNA in Portland in1987, where I launched Microjazz on an unsuspecting American public. And in 2007 in Toronto I launched both Connections and American Popular Piano. This year Scott McBride Smith and I gave a presentation grandly entitled Effective Practice(s) to Direct Success, which outlined why we think American Popular Piano is an excellent way to encourage good practice habits from an early stage.

Lots of seminars go on throughout MTNA, as well as concerts, masterclasses and competitions. There is also an extensive trade area, where I was to be found much of the time. Here's a picture of the Novus Via stand. Can you spot me?

I was gratified by lots of comments from teachers about how they are finding American Popular Piano - many teachers have started to incorporate the series into their teaching and have been delighted with pupil reactions. One teacher from Oregon gave a glowing testimonial during our presentation - with all the right terms: pupil-saver, great for boys, encourages students to practice...

One of our earliest adopters, Jon Michael Iverson was at the convention and played some ensemble pieces with me. Here he is at the piano on our stand:

That's a look of rapt concentration isn't it! Jon's website includes The Christopher Norton Project, where you can see great student performances of Connections and American Popular Piano pieces.

MTNA was a great chance to see colleagues from all over North America and beyond - from Clavier Companion (I write a column for them) Schott Music, Hal Leonard, MYC and EPTA. I was also delighted to attend a reception for Ingrid Clarfield - a documentary is being made about her recovery and continuing work as a teacher after suffering a debilitating stroke 2 years ago. One of her students was almost overcome when she realised who I was (and yes, she is from Canada..)

MTNA was a very happy time and I am beginning to feel optimistic about American Popular Piano making its way in the world. Next year Milwaukee!

DS Music, Monmouth

2010-01-28T17:38:00.000Z

DS Music in Monmouth is a very lively music store that also provides music lessons, has a thriving mail order business and a very enthusiastic and youthful staff. Here’s a picture of the shop, right in the middle of Monmouth’s delightful town centre:

DS Music

The store owner, Jon Petrie, hit on the rather inspired idea of having the workshop in the upstairs room of an excellent Indian restaurant, literally across the road from DS Music. The teachers who came to be entertained and enlightened by me were also fed some high-quality Indian food at the end of proceedings! Here’s a picture of Jon, a musician himself:

Jon Petrie

I did the American Popular Piano and Microjazz demonstrations in one uninterrupted presentation – the promise (and smell) of the food meant that there was a certain pressure not to go over time! A number of teachers came up to play duets with me and also to have a go at improvising and I felt there was a very good understanding from the people there of what I was trying to do. DS Music had a comprehensive selection of music on display and there was lots of interest in the books in evidence at the end, despite the lure of the chicken korma.

I hope to get back to Monmouth again before too long, to perhaps work in some other local schools as well as with local teachers.

Haberdashers Monmouth School for Girls

2010-01-28T17:36:00.002Z

Haberdashers Monmouth School for Girls enjoys an outstanding academic reputation but it is also justifiably proud of its national and international sporting and musical achievements.

Its excellent facilities include a sixth form centre, science laboratories, music rehearsal and recording studio, indoor pool, sports hall and all-weather pitch. Here’s a photo of the striking main buildings:

Haberdashers School for Girls

I initially spoke to a large Year 8 class and spoke about being a composer, with lots of music examples, some of which involved students coming up to play. It was a fun session and I think the girls enjoyed it!

Then I had a group of GCSE students and they expressed nervousness about writing their own compositions. So I decided to get a number of students to come up and start an idea off (at the piano) and I then showed them how you could take a short melodic idea (one was 2 notes!) or a rhythm or a bit of text and make a composition from it. My chief assertion was that they should stop trying to write one perfect piece and instead write lots of pieces so that it became less of an obstacle to progress. We touched on the three fundamentals of composition:

Getting started

Continuing

Finishing!

This was a most enjoyable session and I think the girls went away more confident in their ability to come up with ideas and develop them quickly and spontaneously.

The Cathedral School, Cardiff

2010-01-27T17:40:00.001Z

The Cathedral School, Llandaff is a coeducational independent day prep school located in Llandaff, Cardiff and has many links to Llandaff Cathedral.

Music at the Cathedral School is very strong, with many pupils at Grade 8 standard. The music department is housed in the impressive state-of-the-art Jubilee building. There are also specialist teachers for 20 different instruments. There are numerous school groups as well, including school orchestra, swing band and chamber choir.

The Head of Music, Michael Hoeg, asked me to come for a full day and it proved to be a very enjoyable day. Here he is (on the right) with the school’s Head of Brass:

Cathedral school music staff

I started with some master classes with students – pieces from the Concert Collections as well as Microjazz were played by a variety of instrumentalists (solo piano included) They all performed very well and it was clear how a comprehensive programme of instrumental tuition really can pay off!

I then worked with year 9 GCSE composition students, with students from other years sitting in. I got the students to get some ideas going on the spot, using their computers to notate their ideas as best they could. I then took those ideas and suggested various ways they could be developed, including ad hoc arrangements for the whole group to join in on. Here’s one of my cheerful composition students at the end of the session:

After lunch, I talked to a smaller group called the Scholars’ Society about my life as a composer. This group has talks from various visiting luminaries – I think I may have been their first music composer!

Finally, I did a workshop on improvisation, using pieces from American Popular Piano. This featured students who were very new to improvising in the main and they did very well. I also jammed with a student who had already done quite a bit of improvising and he found it particularly useful to have his ideas analysed and reined in somewhat – the result proved to be very satisfying for him as well as for the audience. This was a very stimulating end to a fun day. Here is my star improviser at work:

Cathedral school improvisation student

This was an excellent template for day in a school – master classes, work on composition, a talk on my life as a composer and an improvisation session. As Michaek Hoeg said to me in a subsequent email:

Thank you so much for coming to work with us yesterday. I have had a great many positive comments from both students and staff and, speaking personally, I learned a great deal myself. I hope that one day you will be able to come and see us again.

Auckland, New Zealand

2009-12-10T15:57:00.001Z

Auckland is New Zealand’s largest city and one of the most spectacular cities in the world – lots of volcanoes, lots of beaches and a spectacular harbour. How about this?

As in Whangarei, I was invited to give a workshop by the RMT (Registered Music Teachers) Auckland branch. There are RMT branches all over New Zealand and they do a great job of promoting good piano teaching, as well as putting on events like this!

The large group again consisted of teachers and students and quite a few people came up to play duets and to try some improvisation. I did the same 2-part presentation as in Whangarei and again interest and enthusiasm were in evidence. Here I am in action:

As the picture indicates, the workshop was in a church – there are a number of striking historic churches in Auckland and this one, St Lukes Church in Remuera, is really very attractive, especially on a sunny day. The stained glass and the dark wood make for a very distinctive combination.

One of the most striking aspects of this workshop was that I had answered “tea and cake” when asked what I would like to have available at the half-way point. The organizers had made a fantastic Christmas cake and offered it to the audience (along with lots of other goodies) at the break. What was left of the cake (which was considerable) was ceremonially presented to me to take with me on the rest of my trip. How about that for New Zealand hospitality?

Finally, here’s a picture of what you can tell is a very attentive audience at the Auckland workshop:

Thanks to Liz Calvert of the Auckland RMT for doing such a fantastic job organising this event. I hope to see you all again soon!

Whangarei, New Zealand

2009-12-09T15:46:00.002Z

Whangarei is the northernmost city in New Zealand and it has a warm and humid subtropical climate. Summers occasionally exceed 30°C, and there is plenty of rain, spread relatively evenly throughout the year. It has a stunning harbour and coastline. Here’s a picture of Whangarei:

I gave a presentation on the 9th December for the Whangarei Registered Music Teachers and the good-sized audience was a nice mixture of teachers and students. Some had come some considerable distance to be there. The by-now-familiar game of two halves consisted of a talk about American Popular Piano (www.americanpopularpiano.com), great New Zealand tea and cakes and then a presentation on Microjazz, featuring both a greatest hits element and tracks from my latest album(s). The audience were both attentive and enthusiastic and I was pleased to have both teachers and students coming up to play and even to improvise.

Here are three very cheerful students from Northland:

The audience certainly “got” what I was talking about and there was lots of interest in the new material – APP of course, but also brand-new books like MicroLatin and MicroRock. And of course the Christmas material, both Concert Collection and New APP Christmas pieces, proved of interest (in spite of the sun blazing outside!)

One special feature of this workshop was the presence of a very gifted 9 year old composer, Joseph Kaptein, who played a very impressive piece of his own at the end of the workshop. New Zealand is still producing them! Here he is at the piano:

Thanks to Dora Harkness, the secretary of the Northland branch of the RMT, for putting this event on and for getting such a good crowd (and on such a nice day!)

John Perryn Primary School, East Acton, London

2009-11-26T23:18:00.001Z

Back in 2006 John Perryn Primary School in East Acton was declared to be failing its pupils and faced closure if it didn’t pull its socks up.

The school received an £8.9 million investment from the Government and it is now nothing short of state-of-the-art. Facilities for the wider community were also built, including a 25-place children’s centre and adult learning rooms. Impressively strong consideration was given to the environment throughout the project, with the new school using renewable energy sources for heating and achieving a 53% reduction in carbon emissions. Since the pupils moved in April 2009, the school has been taken off special measures, and only one teacher left during the last summer holidays, compared with the four or five in previous years. The number of pupils has risen to 420 from 350 in April last year, and full capacity of 470 is likely to be reached next year. “We’re over the moon,” says head-teacher Von Smith. “We’ve already had people from Buckinghamshire and Essex councils in to see it. I say to them, if every school you build goes as well as this one did, you’ll be lucky.”

John Perryn Primary School

A cellist I have worked with over many years, Robin Thompson Clarke, has recently started a job at John Perryn Primary School and he asked me to come in for a half day and do some composition-related activities with a group of around 60 students.

Here are some of the group. You can see the huge array of nationalities represented!

Students at John Perryn listening to CN

I started by playing the students some pieces (Struttin’ from Microjazz Collection 1 and In the Bag from Microstyles were particularly well received) and got them to keep a beat with each piece, initially one student at a time. We then went onto exploring off-beats, on 2 and 4, but also on 3 and on 4. Finally we began to add rhythms to the beat (and off-beat) to create little purely rhythmic pieces. I got a group of 6 students up and they played simple percussion rhythms while Robin played Desert Air from Big Beats Smooth Grooves with a backing track. One student correctly guessed that the piece was about the desert. The students enjoyed this interactive session and seemed to grasp the concepts very well – the idea of a steady beat, off-beats, rhythms that repeat and rhythms that are an “answer” to a “question”.

After the break, the students were divided into 10 groups of 6 and they worked on pieces, using percussion instruments but also body sounds and glockenspiels! They then all came back together and performed their pieces for the rest of the group. There was a good variety of styles and the concepts they had learned were well embedded.

A return visit could provide an opportunity to develop pieces with more instruments and on specific themes (desert pieces, water pieces, urban pieces with body-popping etc) The willingness to try things out and be creative was wonderful to see.

This was a great opportunity to work with a delightful group of 10 to 12 year olds. I shows that group composition can work as a concept!

CN and students listen to one of the performance

St Veit, Austria

2009-11-06T23:25:00.000Z

At an altitude of 1500m above sea level, St. Veit is apparently Austria´s highest health resort!  It’s in a sunny hillside setting (in summer) and has fantastic views of the surrounding valley.  I flew to Vienna from London, then drove south for over 3 hours to get to St Veit, by which time it was dark, so the charm of the town centre was what I was aware of rather more than the actual setting of the town. Like this:

St Veit, Austria

I was met at the hotel by Cornelia Angelov from Schott Mainz and also by Heiko Kremers from Roland Germany. This was the first joint workshop sponsored by both Schott and Roland Germany and was held in a local church in St Veit. There was a delightful and friendly group of teachers from St Veit, some of whom had heard of Microjazz, some of whom were new to my work. Here are some of the teachers and you can see that they were happy to play as well as to listen:

Teachers playing and listening in St Veit

The first half of the presentation was introducing the teachers to the sounds of Microjazz, which has become a catch-all term for the Microjazz Collections, the Microstyles Collection, the Concert Collections and the Preludes Collections (and latterly MicroSwing, MicroLatin and MicroRock) The teachers seemed to really like the material and could see how it could be easily incorporated into their teaching programmes.

The second part of the presentation was concentrating more on the use of the HPi series of Roland digital pianos. 50 Microjazz pieces are “embedded” into these pianos and you can do all sorts of things with the data. For example:

You can listen to a performance of any one of the 50 pieces, recorded (and approved!) by the composer
You can record the left or right hand part of your chosen piece, using a built-in metronome (you set the speed) while the “other” hand is played back by the piano. The piano’s software can also rate your recorded performances!
You can record one hand or both hands of the piece with a great backing track.
You can make your own pieces up to the backing track and record them.

I’m still getting used to how to use the software seamlessly with a student but we had lots of fun playing around with the various combinations (as students will when they use the HPi piano at home)

It was clear that the combination of the Microjazz series, with its pieces that appeal to students and its strong pedagogical elements, and the interactive software built into the Roland HPi series pianos, has great potential. Students will be more inclined to practice, play and record things at home and of course they are building a knowledge base of contemporary popular styles quite effortlessly.

I hope to be doing more work in 2010 with Roland and Schott in the UK, Germany and Austria, using the Microjazz series alongside the HPi pianos. There is good potential for reaching new audiences through this exciting medium.

Thanks to Heiko from Roland Germany and Cornelia from Schott for organising this workshop and special thanks to the local St Veit Roland dealer, who was a great enthusiast for what we are doing (and a big fan of Country Preludes!)

Finally here’s a picture of me at one of the pianos, jamming along with a teacher who is playing the other piano, using the built-in software.

Beverley Music Centre, Beverley, Yorkshire, UK

2009-10-04T14:20:00.003+01:00

Beverley Music Centre has been serving the musical needs of people in east Yorkshire for over 30 years. The thriving music shop is near the town centre and has a wide range of sheet music as well as musical instruments and CDs . What about this for a

quaint shop front?

Beverley Music Centre

This was a well-organised event and was a good-sized group which included one young (12ish) student, who helped me out with both a duet and some work on APP Preparatory Skills.

Beverley audience members

I also had a non-player up to help out (very impressively) with In the Bag from Microstyles (he’s in the centre of the group photo)The audience were very friendly and attentive and were most interested in both American Popular Piano and in new Microjazz books like MicroLatin and MicroRock. As with other stops on this tour, the improvisation elements were of particular interest and indicate that attitudes to improvisation are changing, even among music teachers!

Beverley teachers (and student)

Thanks to Rosalind Willoughby and the staff of Beverley Music Centre for hosting such a happy occasion.

The King’s School, Grantham, UK

2009-10-03T14:34:00.001+01:00

The King’s School in Grantham can trace its lineage back as far as 1329, making it one of the oldest schools in the UK. Isaac Newton and William Cecil are among the many illustrious old boys. Music thrives at King’s. There are unparalleled opportunities for performance, whether it be as a soloist or as part of a small or large ensemble. Over 200 instrumental lessons take place each week and approximately a third of the school learn to play a musical instrument. There’s a big band and a soul band. Justin Dixon, the head of music, invited me to do a workshop on keyboard improvisation. 26 boys took part and quite a few played for me. Here’s the whole group:

King’s School improvisation workshop

I began by playing a bluesy improvised piece from Jazz Preludes, with track, which went down well. Then I asked the boys to listen to 3 snippets of piano improvisation – from Oscar Peterson, Jamie Cullum and Lyle Mays. This got us into a discussion about what the relationship is between what students play and what they listen to and we also touched on what sort of music they might want to improvise.

Then we were straight into improvisation on Intercity Stomp, using Improvise Microjazz as the source material. Various students helped me and did some good improvising very quickly. Here’s me with 2 students hard at work:

Students improvise with CN

I then moved onto A Day in Majorca and I showed the students how you can build up left hand chords, then a right hand solo, using The Easiest Way To Improvise.

Finally, we went onto American Popular Piano, using Spider Blues from Level 3 and Happy Times from Level 6. There were some quite startling results from the students who played and the rest of the group found it informative and, I think, entertaining.

Concentration!

The participants enjoyed trying some freer improvisation, using grace notes, pedal notes, tremolo and other tasty devices. I hope many of them will go away thinking that they can definitely start to improvise and that they have some tools for that purpose as well.

Millers Music Centre, Cambridge, UK

2009-10-02T14:40:00.002+01:00

Millers Music Centre is one of the longest established companies in Cambridge and is believed to be the second oldest music shop in Britain. They have a great selection of sheet music as well as a wide range of musical instruments. This was a Saturday morning workshop and we held it in the dining room of a local hostelry. It was a small but enthusiastic group and they still got the full show. Here’s Miller Music Centre’s very enthusiastic sheet music specialist (and this was after the presentation):

Miller Music Centre sheet music man

I did my usual American Popular Piano and Microjazz double presentation. One of the participants works in Hertfordshire and said the same presentation would be of interest to teachers of piano employed by the county. Watch this space! Here he is:

A Royston teacher

He’s holding a copy of MicroRock - this is part of a new series, so far consisting of Microswing, MicroLatin and MicrRock. The pieces in each book start really easy (in 5-finger position) and progress to no more than Grade 3 in difficulty. They have great backing tracks as well.

This was my second visit to Cambridge in 2009 and I hope to be back again in the future to see how people are getting on with all the new material.

Gillian Greig Music, Taunton, UK

2009-09-15T19:16:00.002+01:00

Gillian Greig Music was started way back in the 1980s and the owner (Gillian Greig) tells me that I came and did a workshop for her over 20 years ago! We both agreed that we looked pretty much the same now as we did then….

Here is Gillian:

Gillian Greig

This was, like Truro, a small group, but there are always interesting people to meet and new connections to be made. One of the most interesting was another composer, Jonathan Lee, who is making a fine career in music and is definitely someone to watch. He and his sister were there and were very attentive and supportive.

The Lees

Once again, American popular Piano was presented and I was pleased to see some teenagers in the audience, one of whom played some ensembles with me (beautifully) and also did some great improvisation on The Girl on the Beach. It’s always good to see students as well as teachers at these events.

Students in Taunton

The second half was once again dedicated to all things Microjazz and Rock preludes and Microrock proved particular favourites . These 2 workshops in the west (Cornwall on the 11th, Somerset on the 12th) were intimate but very enjoyable events and I’m sure I’ll see more of some of the participants before long.

City Music, Truro, UK

2009-09-12T15:32:00.000+01:00

This was another workshop for private music teachers; I was pleased to find it immediately became an unofficial get-together for local teachers, some who hadn’t seen each other for some time, others who were meeting for the first time. The first three ladies to arrive were happy to get acquainted or get re-acquainted - they were surprised to find that they all taught other instruments besides piano – violin, recorder and clarinet…

Three Truro teachers

People were coming and going somewhat during this workshop – some came before teaching (or picking up their own children) others came after teaching. I had to ask people to summarise what they had just heard for the next person! As in Reading, it was a game of two halves – American Popular Piano in the first half, Microjazz and other B & H materials in the second half.

It was a glorious day – not a cloud in the sky – and I was able to enjoy wandering around Truro in the morning, including an uncalled-for but somehow necessary stop at Rowes Cornish pasty shop for, erm, a pasty. Here’s a picture I took of Truro Cathedral to show what a lovely day it was:

Truro Cathedral

The staff at City Music (who were great) and the teachers said it had been a very disappointing summer weather-wise and this was about the best day I could have picked to see Truro. Good to know..

Once again, teachers were very complimentary about the APP repertoire and very intrigued by the improvisation methodology. I used examples from three different Levels and I think began to sway the doubters!

The Microjazz-and-related-materials part of the presentation was notable for various things:

Everyone knew Inter-city stomp!
Joy to the world (Concert Collection 1) was a great hit
The Preludes were new to the teachers – they were interested to hear that there are “concert” pieces in the repertoire

One teacher was keen on organising an in-service day for keyboard teachers. And there was an interest in my music for ensemble – Flexensembles and Microjazz for Ensemble..

There was also interest from the shop, a Roland dealer, in a return visit to talk about the Roland HPi-6 piano and the embedded Microjazz pieces in it. So I may yet get to have another of those pasties…

Another Truro teacher

This was once again a happy (and sunny) occasion and City Music are to be commended for arranging it – it was the first workshop for their sheet music manager. They said that they would like me to come back again, preferably when the weather is much worse (ie any time!)

Score Store, Wokingham at Leighton Park School, Reading, UK

2009-09-10T16:14:00.003+01:00

This was a workshop specifically for private piano teachers and we were lucky to be able to use the concert hall (and Steinway grand) at Leighton Park School, a Quaker independent school set in rolling parkland not far from the centre of Reading (www.leightonpark.reading.sch.uk) Every teacher present was already familiar with my name and with Microjazz and other Boosey & Hawkes’ materials; none of them had come across American Popular Piano before. They had some initial questions about the series, for example:

Q: Why is the term “American” in the series’ name?

A: We have used a range of popular styles in APP with which America has become strongly identified

Q: How would you persuade a parent that 4 books per Level is a justifiable investment?

A: We hope that the usefulness of all the elements in APP across an entire year will prove to be in fact very good value for money!

Here are the some of the teachers who came to the workshop:

Teachers at the Reading workshop

I began by playing some APP pieces – I find that if people like the pieces right away, you’re in with more of a chance!

CN plays..

I then went on to give an overview of the present state of piano teaching and the difficulties faced by teachers trying to compete for students’ attention in the face of homework, sport, computer games and other activities perceived as more “cool” than piano-playing. There was some lively discussion about why students give up at various stages and we touched on the fact that students often play a range of music on the piano but listen to a completely different range of music back at home.. I then explained that APP is designed to use music in styles familiar to the student, but without sacrificing the fundamentals of good piano playing, sight-reading and ear-training.

I then moved through the Repertoire books, illustrating the 3 main categories – lyrical pieces, rhythmic pieces and ensembles – with some help from the audience as well as video clips of student performances. Here’s one of the teachers who was brave enough to come up and play for the group:

A teacher helps to demonstrate APP.

The teachers liked the Repertoire books, especially the fact that there are Ensembles, with teacher accompaniment and backing track, at every Level. But it was the Etudes books that really got their attention – a way of teaching improvisation that virtually anyone can feel comfortable with. I had a teacher improvising – she was actually quite an experienced improviser already, but she found the way APP keeps things very simple and ordered very useful. And the group agreed that the range of styles and the use of “authentic” left-hand voicings (generally in inversion) was both stimulating musically and applicable right away with students.

Another question came up – there was an ABRSM examiner there and she asked how the APP material (and approach) related to the ABRSM jazz syllabus. I said that there were inevitably overlaps (particularly blues pieces) but that the overall range of styles in APP is very different from the ABRSM syllabus – much more popular music than jazz style-wise. APP also progresses much more steadily from one Level to the next than any UK syllabus. I feel that APP is a good way of getting students (particularly at an absolute beginner level) comfortable with improvisation, so it is a useful way of preparing to work on more specifically jazz material.

We had a break at this point and the teachers looked at the books supplied by Score Store. Here are some enthusiastic teachers perusing the materials:

Teachers looking at the books

In Part 2, I did a quick overview of the Boosey & Hawkes’ materials, obviously referring to Microjazz (some teachers were new to the Microjazz Trios, for 6 hands) but also to Microstyles, the Concert Collections, the Easiest Way To Improvise, the Essential Guides, the Preludes Collections and the new Microswing, MicroLatin and MicroRock books. I played quite a few pieces, some with tracks and was able to get the teachers roughly up to speed with what I’ve written since 1983!

This was a very friendly and positive group and I’d like to thank both Score Store Wokingham (www.scorestore.co.uk) and Leighton Park School for hosting the event so well. I hope the teachers who bought APP sets to try out with their students will come back to the websites (www.christophernorton.com and www.americanpopularpiano.com) and let us know how they are getting on!

Some final pictures:

The range of books ...

Absorbed!

Workshop at Chetham's School of Music, Manchester

2009-09-07T13:02:00.008+01:00

Report on Christopher Norton workshop at Chetham’s School of Music, Manchester, UK, August 25^th 2009

With 290 or so students aged 8 - 18, Chetham’s is the largest specialist Music School in the UK and the only Music School based in the North of England. The annual Summer School for pianists is now in its ninth year. There is no other summer school that manages to cater for adult amateurs, promising children and observers! All are welcome on the course - concert pianists, international young artists preparing for top competitions, and professional music teachers. I was invited to do a presentation at the 2009 Summer School and, as I expected, I addressed an interesting mix of students, teachers and yes, observers! Here’s a cross-section of the audience:

One person I spoke to was from Phoenix. Arizona (second row up) another was not a specialist music teacher but interested in getting a Venezuelan-style scheme youth music scheme going in London. There were also a couple of teachers who played in a piano duo. And lots of students, perhaps happy to do something a little less intense than the practicing and performing they had been doing the rest of the time!

I soon realized that some of the audience didn't know who I was, let alone anything about Microjazz, so I began by giving a mini-historical overview, including my own classical piano background in New Zealand and how Microjazz came to be, so to speak. I played various pieces from Microjazz, Microstyles, the Concert Collection and Preludes and as always included some fun audience participation. Here’s one of my “students”, still looking cheerful after coming up on stage with me

Then I got onto American Popular Piano and went through the basics of this unique piano course. This always requires some audience participation, an entertaining element (particularly for the observers) Here’s a student who helped me out on the improvisation front:

This really was a flying visit, as I had to get back to Leeds to celebrate my elder daughter’s engagement (see the picture at the top!) The mix of audience that Chetham’s Summer School creates is great – students who are looking for new repertoire, teachers who want to hear something fresh on the pedagogical front and amateurs who are just interested in the whole process of piano playing and teaching. It was a privilege to be a part of this year's Summer School.

NCKP 2009 in Chicago IL

2009-08-05T15:37:00.004+01:00

NCKP (http://www.francesclarkcenter.org) stands for the National Conference of Keyboard Pedagogy. It’s a bi-annual conference that brings together academics, private music teachers and music industry professionals from across the US and Canada. The 2009 delegate list reads like a virtual “Who’s Who” of keyboard music education in America. I was at NCKP representing Novus Via Music and I both co-presented a session on American Popular Piano (www.americanpopularpiano.com) and also worked in the conference exhibit hall with many of the delegates, showing them the music but also guiding their first steps at improvising.

The interest in American Popular Piano proved to be amazingly strong and our showcase proved, even at 8.00 am, to be the biggest draw of the conference. There was a palpable buzz about our company and our ever-expanding product line, underlined by the fact that we sold out of books!

The strong interest in evidence at NCKP is partly because Scott McBride Smith and I have been doing lots of promotional work around North America (see previous blogs) But I also felt that North American music teachers are ready for something fresh and are also as a group starting to pay more than lip-service to improvising as a component of their teaching programmes. I worked with quite a number of teachers on how the APP approach to improvisation works and they were all very keen to take the books home and try them out right away. Here I am with a very happy Amy Immerman (from Ohio)

The stand at the exhibit was a hive of activity much of the time – here’s a picture of Scott McBride Smith (he’s the tall one!) deep in conversation with a teacher while other people peruse the (diminishing) stocks.

Shortly after this photo was taken, Scott flew off to Oregon to present American Popular Piano at the Oregon Music Teachers Association. Here is a testimonial from one of the teachers in Oregon:

"I am a classically trained jazz/improv pianist—a high level professional plus fully certified and licensed as a Music Specialist in Oregon K-12 with Masters Degree in Music Education & piano. I think American Popular Piano is the finest series I have ever seen for the students we have today taking piano for enjoyment, not competitions. I am so sold—I literally RAN to the OMTA vendor booth and bought the first set at this weekend’s OMTA conference and am already filling out order requests for a bunch more."

Jon Michael Iverson was also at NCKP and played ensemble pieces with me. Some of the videos he has created with his students were a great hit during the showcase. You can hear (and see) more of them at www.jonmichaeliverson.com. Look for The Christopher Norton Project….

We were very fortunate to have Richard and Isaac Holbrook (www.holbrookpiano.com) assisting us – they are former pupils of Scott McBride Smith and Carolyn Shaak who have both gone on to make careers in music, including helping to run a prestigous summer music camp for gifted students from around the world – iiym (www.iiym.com) Here is Isaac with Rosa, a teacher who helped me during the showcase by acting as my student and being instructed on improvisation from APP Etudes Level 1, on stage. A brave girl!

NCKP was a wonderful chance to meet colleagues, see my growing number of American teacher friends (including the organiser of my recent Boston workshop, Kathy Maskell) and feel a dramatic surge of interest in American Popular Piano. This could be the beginning of something big! There were also a number of enquiries about visits to teacher groups and music schools which may well create a whole programme of North American events in 2010.

Summer Sizzle 2009 Ontario Canada

2009-07-14T15:56:00.002+01:00

Summer Sizzle is a summer music camp for piano teachers and piano students, held in a lovely small town in southern Ontario, Palmerston. It was the 9^th year for Summer Sizzle this year and the biggest attendance yet. There were lectures and seminars for teachers, master classes and one-on-one sessions for students, improvisation workshops and a Keyboard Kamp (spelling deliberate!) for the children, run by a number of very able and enthusiastic musicians. Here are some of the students who took part in Summer Sizzle in 2009:

I was asked to run a series of improvisation sessions, using American Popular Piano Preparatory Etudes right through to Level 7 Etudes. My first session was for absolutely all participants and it was great fun – I got lots of students to come and try improv ideas out, with me and with tracks and I also got the whole group to do things. It set the tone for subsequent sessions, which were for smaller groups of students. Here’s one of my students, jamming away and concentrating hard!

I started the improv sessions with individual students but finally worked my way to having 8 students on 4 keyboards, all taking turns to solo but often keeping chords or riffs going under the other soloists.

Yup, that’s me in shorts..

Scott McBride Smith meanwhile was supervising master classes – students were asked to prepare pieces by er, me and he imparted his amazing teaching wisdom both to the players and to the onlookers. Here he is with a student:

The best 15 students were chosen (by Scott) to play in a Christopher Norton concert on the Monday night and I felt that Scott’s work plus the improvisation sessions meant that something really special happened. The students played with confidence and verve (including some jamming on stage) and the audience was positively electrified by the atmosphere of the event.

As you can see, I jammed along with the students some of the time in the concert, which was unrehearsed but worked wonderfully well most of the time.

I also did a seminar on vertical harmony (the analysis of chords divorced from functional harmony) and I think most teachers found this interesting! My aim was to get teachers enthused about individual chords (and recognizing them as well) all over again.

This was a really special music camp and I hope I might get back there next year. Hopefully we will see some readers there too!

MTAC Convention Santa Clara

2009-07-06T15:32:00.001+01:00

As it states on its website (www.mtac.org) the Music Teachers' Association of California, incorporated in 1897, is a professional organization of approximately 4,500 members. Throughout its 100 year history, MTAC has dedicated its efforts towards the pursuit of excellence in music education.

Each of the more than sixty branches throughout the state - from Humboldt County to San Diego - maintains its own schedule of programs and activities and participates in state wide projects and programs.

The 2009 MTAC convention was in Santa Clara and guess what? The weather was perfect throughout – cloudless skies and a gentle breeze. However, I was kept occupied in the convention centre (or center, for US readers) most of the time. Novus Via Music (www.nvmusicgroup.com) had an impressively large booth in the exhibitors’ area and Scott McBride Smith, Clarke MacIntosh and I were kept very busy talking to teachers about American Popular Piano, particularly the relatively new Levels 6 through 8 (or 6 to 8, for British and Commonwealth readers)

Here’s a photo of Gary Ingle, President of MTNA, the national (USA) Association that represents piano teachers, with Scott McBride Smith, me and Clarke MacIntosh.

Scott, as you can see, is taller than average…

Scott and I did a presentation on American Popular Piano at 8 am on the Sunday morning and it drew a very large audience. The workshops both Scott and I have done in California, often to small teacher groups, have really helped to make more people aware of us and the series. The presentation went very well and there was strong interest evidenced at the Novus Via stand over the following days.

One thing I would like to highlight – a number of teachers came up because they were interested in the radically different approach to the teaching of improvisation as evidenced in the APP Etudes books. I was able to work with some of these teachers, taking them through the original piece, then through Modules within the Etudes, then getting them to improvise more freely, with on-the-fly suggestions from me regarding simple but effective techniques about improvising better. The results were gratifying, to say the least, and it made me aware that teachers need to feel comfortable with improvising before they embark on teaching it themselves!

Here’s a picture of one of my newbie improvisers – a church musician who had never tried improvising in the styles found in Levels 6 -8 and who discovered she had a real flair for it.

I hope to get back to California before too long – apart from Ellen Tryba Chen, whose students I worked with for 2 days prior to MTAC, there was quite a lot of interest in organising improvisation workshops for teachers and students in California. Watch this space!