QUESTION: "I've recently begun teaching adult leisure classes. I realize that I must plan and teach differently than for private lessons and I want to work on more than technique and repertoire. Do you have suggestions for activities that would engage everyone in the group?" ANSWER: This is such a great question. My adult classe...

Town Hall Discussion: Teaching Adults Online with Pamela Pike, Jackie Edwards-Henry, Rebecca Bellelo, Yeeseon Kwon, Timothy DePrey & Chris Madden.  Did you enjoy this webinar? Please complete our brief survey to help us improve our webinar series and continue to bring you the highest quality resources in piano teaching. 

In Transformational Piano Teaching: Mentoring Students from All Walks of Life, Derek Kealii Polischuk provides an overview of various student populations we might encounter as piano teachers, and offers snapshots of how to work with and engage these seemingly disparate groups. "The book examines the role of mentor, a r...

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Say the word "Eurhythmics" to a group of age-forty-plus adults and they would likely define it as a pop music group from the 1980s. College students might even give the same response. The same word given to a group of music educators would likely be defined as movement-based music instruction, primarily ...

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(S3) From Sight to Sound: 6 Original PIano Solos, by Randall Hartsell.  Randall Hartsell composed From Sight to Sound to express the "interconnectedness of nature and our lives," and this collection contains six reflective pieces characterized by melodic simplicity and harmonic richness. The collection capitalizes on the piano's capacity for c...

I am a very happy and fairly healthy "Baby Boomer"—my father was a World War II veteran, and I was born in the fifties. We "Boomers" are your current and upcoming adult piano students. Why? Because we realize we have more to learn—we are excited learners. We are not isolated but are well read and intelligent—we are logical learners. We are wonderfu...

"Most people take piano lessons as a child, not as a middle-aged woman in prison." These words, spoken by a piano student at the Goodman Correctional Institution in Columbia, South Carolina are true. This truth is a part of the reason why I began a small program for piano study at the prison two years ago. My research while a student at the Univers...

Teaching music to prison inmates is exactly 30.8 miles from my front door in suburbia to the thick metal door of the Warren Correctional Institution, home to 1,400 male inmates. On my scheduled teaching days, I arrive with my contractor badge and clear plastic bag and wait to see what the day will bring. I never know what is or is not goi...

Playing the piano is a marriage of sorts. Just like a traditional marriage, there are three phases. Phase One, "The Honeymoon Phase," is when we are excited about a new piece and can't wait to explore it. Phase Three, "The Silver Threads Among the Gold Phase," is the warm, cozy, and comfortable phase, when we know the music inside and out. Phase Tw...

It really gets my dander up when I hear people say that adult amateur pianists aren't "serious" about their piano study. Why underestimate the thousands of adults who are passionate about performing at the piano? You will find amateur pianists seeking out performance opportunities through music clubs and associations. They find any excuse to perfor...

"I'm too old to play pieces I don't like," said Heather at one of our first lessons. Heather is a retired Professor in Romance Languages and Literatures, as well as an expert on the composer Schubert. It's no surprise that her repertoire is steeped in Schubert's music. She loves it that way, and so do I. It's not always this easy picking reper...

The trapeziometacarpal joint, also called the "trapezium," is at the base of the thumb. Osteoarthritis, a well-known condition suffered by many adults, affects the trapezium in some people. Sufferers experience pain, stiffness, and weakness in the thumb joint. This is particularly troublesome when the sufferer is a pianist.  Luckily, there are...

Jill Dew is one of my favorite people. You can't help but love her charisma and her enthusiasm. She is a superb singer and vocal coach who loves her students. She also loves playing the piano, sometimes in tearful wonder of the instrument and her accomplishments. Then she was robbed. Robbed by the effects of arthritis. Jill is not naive—arthritis i...

Our musical, mystical mojo Why would someone decide to take on the study of piano in the adult years? Researchers have taken on this question many times. According to Maslow, it is "self actualization." Schlossberg says it is because of some sort of transition in our life—perhaps the student was recently widowed, retired, or suffers from "empty nes...

"Growing old is not for the weak in spirit." Although I've heard this adage countless times, I finally know what it means. For me, 2010 ushered in a series of medical mishaps, medications, and miracles. I'm now a cancer survivor, yet I feel that surviving the myriad of prescriptions is another story. I always knew I would grow older, but I nev...

Can you imagine spending ten glorious days in a stunning country setting, surrounded by good food, good company, and thirty pianos? Many pianists have done just that by attending the Sonata camp, held in an antique-filled forty-two-room house set on two luscious acres of rolling hills in rural Vermont. The Sonata camp has b...

When my adult students tell me they are "not serious" about their piano study, a red flag goes up- "serious" means different things to different people. Although students may be trying to say their final goal is not to be a performer, more often than not they are saying, "I don't have time to practice a lot, but I'm very serious about learning to p...

There are many famous people who have stage fright. According to Patrick Enright of MS IEC.com1; Andrea Bocelli told Connie Chung that he's constantly afflicted by stage fright that lasts almost his entire performance. "The only way is to go on stage and to hope. " Glenn Gould quit playing in front of live audiences because of his discomfort w...