New Music!

Hello, all! A fairly large online music retailer recently had a female composers sale, so when I saw what was on offer, I gleefully rubbed my hands together, did some budgeting, and got to hunting.

Not all of the music has arrived yet–one book was on back order–but I did receive my copy of Florence Price’s Sonata in E Minor for piano yesterday!

I’ve talked about Florence Price before as a part of my History Hunt series, so it’s exciting to now have one of her works in my studio library. I look forward to sharing it with my piano students, present and future!

Studio Lending Library: A bit of self-indulgence

One of my major goals in building up my studio lending library is to provide my students with access to music they might not otherwise come across. Whether that’s in the form of music by female composers or performers, or music that’s outside the dominant cultural sphere, it’s very important to me for students to have these musical experiences.

…That said, the two CDs I’m adding to my library today don’t fall into those categories and are instead pure self-indulgence on my part.

Mozart’s music isn’t exactly difficult to come by, and he isn’t what one might call obscure, either. However, the Concerto For Flute and Harp was one of my absolute favourite pieces growing up; it’s one of the major reasons why I’m a flute teacher today. (I might have become a harp teacher were it not for the fact that the instrument was far beyond my parents’ budget.) The copy I listened to was a cassette, so when I found a CD version, I snapped it up immediately.

My first semester of music history during my Bachelor of Music Education degree was an awakening of sorts for me. Prior to attending the class, I’d been exposed to plainchant (also known as Gregorian chants) and the Mediæval Bæebes, and a certain degree of Renaissance church music via my aunt, who was a choral singer, but that was all. Once I was introduced more formally to the early music period, I fell in love. And I’ve been going out of my way to pick up albums from the period ever since.

To further date myself beyond what I’ve already done in this post, talking to both a student and my roommate in the past week or so has shown me that there’s a bit of a flaw with my CD library plans: specifically, that not everyone has equipment capable of playing CDs anymore. I’m not…quite sure what I’m going to do in these cases; I’ll have to look into my options over the next while. But in the meantime, I hope everyone else will enjoy my ever-growing library!

Studio Lending Library: Hitting the Jackpot

A quick “Coming Soon” update today to let everyone know that my studio website’s musical library is expanding! I hit the jackpot at the thrift store the other day and picked up a whole bunch of CDs that I’ll be adding to my music library over the next couple of weeks. Stay tuned!

Lending Library Addition: “Rotorua International Maori Entertainers”

Hello all! I’ve added a new CD to my website lending library: “Rotorua International Maori Entertainers,” presented by Maureen and John Waaka. I was delighted to stumble upon it while out and about recently, because this is not the sort of album that’s easy to come across thousands upon thousands of kilometres away from where it was recorded.

The album features a number of traditional Maori songs and chants, including the haka, which has recently become well known outside of New Zealand. There’s also a recording of the stick game Tititorea, which I first learned about during my music education classes when I was doing my Bachelor of Music Education.

Students belonging to my studio, if you’re interested in hearing the recordings on my CD, let me know via email or during your lesson and I can check it out for you. Everyone else…may a copy of this album find its way to you!

Studio Music Library Updated!

Just a small update today, for a student who wanted to practice playing in minor keys. Since Christmas is on its way (and seems extremely imminent if you happen to step into the shops), I thought I might as well provide a carol.

Since my student is religious, I slightly reworked “The Coventry Carol.” The original copy in one of my music books had the fingering written so whoever was playing it would put both thumbs on Middle C, but since that hand position is pretty much universally disliked in my studio, I changed it up.

Students belonging to my studio can now download the piece from my website by logging in. I hope you enjoy it!

New Lending Library Update

Today, I have a new CD to add to my lending library: Beethoven’s Moonlight.

Mine is a 2-CD set, so the cover looks somewhat different from this…but it’s close enough.

The recording may not have been produced by a well-known label, but when someone offers you a brand new two-disc set of classical music for 95% off, it seems a bit silly to be picky. Especially since it features recordings of Beethoven pieces that feature in the method books and RCM piano collection I use, such as Ode to Joy and Für Elise.

I’ve picked up a few more CDs for my studio as of late, so I’ll be updating as I listen to each one. Given one or two were second hand, I’d like to be sure they actually work before sending them off with my students!

Happy (early) Thanksgiving, all!

A New Virtual Tour

A cold, windy, rainy afternoon slightly derailed my plans to visit local schools with posters advertising my lessons today, and so I spent part of the afternoon redoing my site’s virtual tour. I’ve added five new pictures and included captions intended to be used by screen readers for the visually impaired. It’s my first time doing something like this on my site, as opposed to only on this blog, but I hope to make the accessibility changeover during the course of the fall. If I’ve made any errors, please let me know!

Here’s a sample image–you can view the rest of the tour here.

[Image of a music studio with a piano on the left, a Smart Board directly ahead, and a computer, keyboard, and printer/scanner to the right.]

Small Steps on the Path

It’s been a very busy two weeks for me, between organising my end-of-spring student recital (the hardest one to find a good date for in ten years!) and one of my cats deciding she was going to have an allergy attack over the weekend. (She’s fine, but on way more medication than before.)

Consequently, I don’t have much of an update on my musical representation project today–especially given my computer froze recently before I could save a bunch of notes for my next History Hunt piece. However, I can at least share a few small additions I’ve made to my Classical and Romantic Era timeline.

I’ve blogged about this timeline in the past, and how its ratio of men to women (11:1) and white people to POC (12:0) tells an incomplete story of the musical landscape of the time. So here are a few small steps on the path toward making my studio more inclusive and more historically accurate.

An overview of the changes I made.

Zitkála-Šá, Sioux violinist and composer.

Teresa Carreño, Venezuelan composer, conductor, pianist, and opera singer.

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovksy, who is frequently–and incorrectly–presented as straight by history.

To learn more about Zitkála-Šá and Teresa Carreño, you can read my History Hunt posts about them.

Have a great weekend, everyone!

Representation Remixes: Playful Puppy, by Linda Niamath

I realised earlier this week that it had been a little while since I last did a Representation Remix, and so I picked up my old RCM New Piano Series Preparatory Book and skimmed through it. “Playful Puppy” by Canadian composer Linda Niamath jumped out at me as a piece I remembered enjoying playing as a young piano student, and so that settled that!

This arrangement is a little different than my previous ones. Instead of simply divvying up the piano parts between the flute and accompaniment, I very slightly filled out the accompaniment part so it wouldn’t sound too sparse. What I added wasn’t much, since I wanted to follow the original composition as much as possible, but I think it enhances the arrangement all the same.

I also located the fix for the issue wherein tempo markings weren’t showing up on PDF files when I exported them from Finale, so over the next while, I’ll be reuploading the PDFs I’ve shared here.

This arrangement would work nicely as a study to introduce the upper register to students, as it reaches upper register D, but it isn’t terribly complex otherwise. Grade 1 RCM students would find it most useful.

flute-Niamath-Playful Puppy

flute-Niamath-Playful Puppy-flute

The first link is to both the flute part and the accompaniment; the second is the flute part only.

Enjoy your weekend, all!

Discovered: A Wealth of Music By Women

I went downtown yesterday to pick up a new book for a piano student of mine from The Leading Note. To my delight, I discovered a wealth of music by female composers for both flute and piano alike! Here’s what I bought:

At the Piano With Women Composers, ed. by Maurice Hinson. Published by Alfred Publishing Co. [Intermediate to Early Advanced Piano]
Barcarolle et Scherzo, by Berthe di Vito-Delvaux. Published by CeBeDeM. [Late Intermediate Flute]
As She Was, by Catherine McMichael. Published by Alry Publications Etc., Inc. [Intermediate Flute]

At the Piano With Women Composers features thirteen different women composers writing from the Classical era to the 20th Century. Some of them, we’ve met in my History Hunt series: Amy Beach, Teresa Carreño, Cécile Chaminade, Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel, and Clara Wieck Schumann. Others are still on my to-do list. I’m particularly excited to explore this collection, so my more advanced piano students had better watch out!

Previous posts in this series discovering music by underrepresented composers: (1) (2)