Milton Ontario Workshop

Milton, Ontario is a town west of Toronto off the Trans-Canada Highway 401. It is another very attractive Ontario town, with a charming town centre containing lots of specialty shops. It is also distinguished by being Canada’s fastest growing communities. The local music teachers’ association seems to have taken a liking to me – this was my third visit! My first ever Connections workshop was hosted by the Milton Teachers’ Association (http://www.mmta.ca/aboutus.html) This workshop was on American Popular Piano (www.americanpopularpiano.com) A number of teachers were familiar with the series already and they were therefore very pleased to see Levels 6, 7 and 8 out at last.

Here are the three delightful organisers of the Milton workshop (and me!)

Picture 1: Milton, Ontario teachers and CN

I did a similar presentation to the one at the MTNA Atlanta conference –I started with a description of the present slightly parlous state of piano teaching, - students dropping out young or giving up around 12 years of age or not continuing to play at all once they go to college. There are lots of reasons for this, but a major one is that students have to find time for piano playing alongside all their other activities – sport, homework, Facebook etc. They also need to feel that the music they play is relevant to their musical tastes and (more to the point perhaps) relevant to their friends and parents.

Scott McBride Smith and I, along with Clarke MacIntosh, developed American Popular Piano to help address these issues, as well as to provide a course that emphasises “traditional” virtues like strong, independent fingers, great sight-reading and thoroughgoing ear-training. The Milton teachers agreed with all this, but the demonstration of the Improvisation Etudes at all Levels was the clincher. I had both students and teachers up to play and the results were gratifying, to say the least.

You can get something of the flavour of the event from this picture:

Picture 2: the APP seminar in Milton

The Milton Teachers’ Association was very interested in participating in a possible 2010 Christopher Norton Ontario Spring Tour, so I may see them all yet again (plus lots of students) next spring. Thanks everyone!

London Ontario 2009 Workshop

I’ve been to London, Ontario a number of times now – way back in the late 80s (I think!) with Boosey & Hawkes and Roland Canada, more recently on the Connections tour, then with Scott McBride Smith on the APP trail and, most recently, with Victoria Warwick, the Executive Director of Conservatory Canada on a CC tour. Conservatory Canada (www.conservatorycanada.ca) is, to quote its own mission statement, “a not-for-profit, federally incorporated educational institution of professional musicians and volunteers that serves its clients through programs of study, training, examination, recognition and performance” CC hosted this event, which consisted of a 2-hour teacher workshop on improvisation, 4 master class sessions and, as with the other places, an evening Gala concert. We used the Wolf Performance Hall in the city centre, so we were working in a great purpose-built concert venue

The improvisation workshop was a lot of fun (I thought so anyway!) I used Intercity Stomp from Microjazz, then London Waltz and The Girl on the Beach from APP Prep and Level 1 and finally Bayou Tapestry from APP Level 7. I got one of the teachers to play Intercity Stomp as written first, so that the harmonic framework and melodic ideas were there as a clear starting-point. We then did simple tapped improvised rhythms, with the strong on-beat quarter note Gs supplying the beat. Then we tried improvising using the notes of the piece (F, G, Bb, C, D) as source material, with simple ideas supplied by me to help my “student” get started. Finally I and my plucky student played the original piece up to a certain point, then she did an improvisation over the thumping Gs (she loved doing it, honest!) and then we repeated the piece right to the end. To great acclaim.

The early APP pieces used the Etudes books from the respective Levels and my methodology became clear quite quickly:

• clapping a beat to a backing track
• clapping a given rhythm
• playing the rhythm using only the notes of the original tune
• playing left hand chords (from Level 1 on)
• putting hands together and starting to improvise.

The improv (as we like to call it) uses a set rhythm and given notes, but which of the notes are played when is down to the student. As always, unexpected magic happens at this point.

The group were intrigued by the Level 7 APP Etudes book – chord symbols are beginning to appear, chords (generally in inversion) are highlighted and analysed. The left hand plays the entire chord progression with the backing track, the right hand is then given some improv tips, including the scale(s) or mode(s) to use, the hands are put together and hey presto! something wonderful happens again. 2 examiners for the CC Contemporary Idioms syllabus took part and they seemed to like the approach very much indeed.

The master classes were very different from the previous venues in the sense that one London teacher fielded a number of students who were playing “advanced” classical repertoire – including a Mozart sonata movement, a piece by Kuhlau, Chopin’s Revolutionary Etude and a Liszt Transcendental Etude! I tried not to demonstrate too much of the last pieces mentioned, but it was interesting for the audience to hear much more challenging pieces being attempted by teenage students. I felt sorry for the young student who had to follow a Liszt Transcendental Etude with the 10^th performance of the day of “Stairway”!

The evening Gala was once again a special time for the performers and the improvement in playing during the course of the day was quite noticeable, the Revolutionary Etude as much as Struttin’. Parents and students were impressed by the range and quality of the playing - it really was a very positive occasion.

Sunderland ON Workshop

Sunderland is a small, very charming Ontario town located approximately 100 km northeast of Toronto. We were pleased to have both the use of the Sunderland Town Hall and the enthusiastic support of the local community. This day-long event was organised by Kim Schneider (http://www.myc.com/teacher/KSchneider) ably supported by her husband and children.

Photo 1: Kim Schneider and family (with me)

As in Kingston, there were master classes throughout the day – at 9 am, 10 am, 11 am, 2 pm, 3 pm and 4 pm. With quite large class sizes, I had to keep the pace up!

The day started with a string group with piano playing a movement from my Quintet, then some pieces for violin and piano from the Microjazz series. I thought this was a very nice gesture from the local players – starting with a mini-concert of my string music!

I was pleased to see how many teenagers played in the master classes, particularly teenage boys. The fact that students had chosen the pieces themselves meant that there was a good level of understanding of the music from the outset and there were some very good performances indeed, including pieces for piano 6 hands (Microjazz trios) and for violin and piano (Concert Collection for flute, very effectively played on violin) A very good local singer/songwriter, Lauren Maylon (http://www.myspace.com/laurenmalyon) played a great set at the beginning of the Gala. The day proved to be a rich mix stylistically and the capacity audience at the Gala was very enthusiastic.

Kingston Ontario Workshop

Kingston, Ontario is a very attractive town at the eastern end of Lake Ontario – birthplace of Bryan Adams and of the first Canadian Idol winner, Ryan Malcolm! The interest in a series of master classes from Christopher Norton (er, me…) was such that classes commenced on the Thursday night, followed by a very full day on the Friday. The organiser of this event was Debbie Beckman (http://www.myc.com/teacher/DBeckman) a young and extremely well organised teacher who is part of the Music for Young Children organisation (www.myc.com) MYC hosted very successful events for me in Canada in 2008.

Behind Debbie you can see her husband and three (of her four) delightful children.

Master classes are basically piano lessons done in public – students first choose a piece of mine – from Microjazz (lots of performances of Stairway!), from the Connections series (www.christophernortonconnections.com) and from American Popular Piano (www.NVmusicgroup.com) I listen to the student’s performance and then, as appropriate, make suggestions, sometimes technical, sometimes musical, to make their performance more assured, to make them feel more relaxed when they play in public and to suggest ways to make the style of the piece sound more “authentic”. Parents are in the audience (as well as teachers) and I try to incorporate them in various ways during the master class. For example, if a student is struggling to keep a steady beat, I will get the audience to provide a simplified drum beat, using feet and hands (they love this!) If a student isn’t phrasing a melody properly, I may get the audience to sing the melody back to me correctly phrased. These devices prove very effective as ways to make the student listen to what they are playing and to really feel the beat. I might get a student to clap a beat for me while I play the piece and then I clap for them while they play. In all sorts of ways, an immediate improvement in the performance of their piece can be heard by the audience, but more significantly, an overall improvement in listening and playing can also be seen and heard. I generally get the student to play the piece again once we have worked on aspects that need attention and I often jam along. One eight year old boy stopped playing when I joined in and said (loudly enough for the audience to hear) “what are you doing?!”

At 4 pm on the Friday, there was a one hour improvisation session with teachers – this featured some simple (and fun) improvisation on Intercity Stomp (from Microjazz) and some easy-to-follow improvisation using American Popular Piano Preparatory Level and Level 1. The teachers found it all stimulating and thought it would be easy to apply back in their teaching studios.

During the day, I selected students who I thought had played particularly well (or even students who have improved significantly during the master classes) and we included these students in the evening Gala Concert. Parents (and grandparents) came to this and the Gala Concerts always take on a life of their own. The performers have been looking forward to playing to a much bigger audience and the audience are in turn swept along by the precision, enthusiasm and brio of the young performers. I play as well – pieces form the upper Levels of American Popular Piano, from Connections 7 and 8 and from Rock Preludes and Latin Preludes - and the combined effect is that piano playing is there to be enjoyed and shared. The Gala is a wonderful summing up of the day’s activities and it is by turns moving, breathtaking and even amusing. Some performers finish with a knowing look at me or the audience, realising that their performance has really hit the mark.