Winter/Early Spring Music Lessons

 

Davis Hill Studio

Lessons for Children and Teens

Winter/Early Spring 2021

It's time to sign up for Winter/Early Spring music lessons. I'm planning a “trimester” approach this time around. I hope that will offer everybody some flexibility. I'm hoping to travel out West when the weather and the pandemic allows.

The Winter/Early Spring Term will run from January 4 to April 17. That covers 16 calendar weeks. I'll plan on teaching students 14 lessons over those 16 weeks—with a two-week cushion for flexibility.

The cost for that term, for 45-minute lessons, is

Tuition: $37.50 X 14=525

Materials/Recital/Technology Fee: $50

Total: $575

I recognize that everybody's financial situation is different, so if these rates don't work for you, please talk to me. I teach because I want to, and although I need to make a living at it, I have found ways to make it work for a lot of people in different circumstances.

To cover the rest of the school year and the summer, I'm planning a Late Spring Term that will begin May 3 and end June 12, and a Summer Term that will span July and August.

Making Lemonade

a masterclass for a time of isolation

Pianists and isolation

Pianists are used to being alone. We practice (for hours) alone. We perform alone. A lot of the pieces we want to play are for piano alone. So you might say we are practiced at being alone.

Still, this isolation business is a bit hard to bear. We are in the season when pianists and other musicians come together to play chamber music—perhaps the most wonderful thing a musician can do. We should have been gathering to sample the delights of the companionship of music. Instead those gatherings, by and large, have been canceled.

So, when life hands you lemons.....

Back in May, I was feeling sorry for one of my advanced students. Her contest, for which she'd been preparing for months (in isolation!) was canceled. Then her summer program was canceled. It was sad to think that this year, she wouldn't have a chance to get to know other advancing pianists her age and to hear them play. It was disheartening to think she would miss the chance to learn from highly-advanced pianists/teachers and to imagine a path for herself as she advances her skills at the piano.

Then one day I woke up with the solution to our problem in my mind. I could ask Ratko Delorko to teach over zoom while my student and I participated from the newly-opened Davis Hill Studio studio. I met Ratko on Charles Street in Baltimore when we were both in that fair city to attend a piano teacher's conference. Since then, we have kept up a correspondence and exchanged ideas about teaching and composition. Ratko Delorko is a sought-after clinician and piano coach at a collegiate and professional level. He has traveled the world teaching piano to dedicated students. He established an on-line teaching studio several years ago and so he has a lot of experience guiding students without being able to access any of our profession's tried-and-true hands-on methods. Ratko agreed to set up a masterclass. He will be hosting our first zoom session on Friday, June 19th. (Eastern Standard Time)

I think we should all get ready for the best lemonade ever. It will be as refreshing to hear some new ideas about how to have fun playing the piano as it is to drink a tall glass of freshly squeezed lemonade after a long bike ride--motor powered or otherwise. There is a little foreshadowing in that last sentence; some of you may recognize it. We will enlighten you all on the day of our class. I hope to "see" you there. 

In order to manage the zoom session well, I want to send out invitations to people who are planning to attend. If you would like to attend, please send me an e-mail by Thursday, June 18th at 6 PM. I will be checking my e-mail and will send you a zoom link as soon as I receive a communication from you. Now I'm off to practice. I hope you are, also. 

in pianistic solidarity,

Ellen

Music as Meditation: When is a Jig Not a Jig?

          Hasn't it been reported that the Philosopher Wittgenstien believed that a philosophical treatise might be written completely as a series of questions? If a serious work on the nature of reality could be written that way, why not a press release about the upcoming Music as Meditation planned for Sunday, March 1, at 5:00 PM at Christ Episcopal Church in North Conway?

          When is a Jig not a Jig? How could a jig be written in 2/4 time? Why did J. S. Bach choose such a meter for the last movement of his keyboard partita #6? Why did he choose such a complex work for the 1725 notebook he gave to his second wife Anna Magdalena Bach?

          Why does a composer so capable of complexity work with a simple theme like “Ah vous dirai-je maman” otherwise known as “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star?” What makes a pianist want to play such a work? Might it be that the simple tune weaves through variations spanning light and dark, motile and lyrical?

          Had Beethoven really heard the popular tune for the second movement of his trio (opus 11) for piano, cello, and clarinet, in the lanes of Vienna? Is it helpful to balance the mathematical precision of a Bach Fugue with a romantic work like Rachmaninov's Prelude in G flat, Op 23 No 10? Why is it that so many composers write a short piece in each of the 24 usual keys? How grateful will Ms. Schwindt be to hear Mark Rossnagel play her little Etude in E flat, part of a (mostly-unfinished) set of such pieces? (Hint: the answer is very, very, grateful!)

Mark Rossnagel, visiting classical pianist, will perform at March's Music as Meditation

          And finally, what could be more important than preserving the living memory of these pieces by playing and listening to them? Will we be imbued with the emotions of the pieces, or with the opposites of those emotions?

          What is NOT in question is that we will delight in the playing of visiting pianist Mark Rossnagel, who holds a Bachelor's degree in organ performance from SUNY Binghamton, where he studied with the late Jonathan Biggers, and a Master's degree in piano performance from the University of Southern Maine, where he studied with Laura Kargul. Jenny Huang-Dale, cello, and Judith English, clarinet, are sure to join Ellen Schwindt, piano, to perform the aforementioned Beethoven Trio. We will share a poem Bach liked enough to pen into his wife's notebook and other musings on the nature of aspects and music.

           Music as Meditation is a monthly gathering of listeners and artists interested in the spiritual—though not necessarily religious—source of art and music. Music as Meditation in April has a folk music focus. The gatherings take place on the first Sunday of each month at 5 PM at Christ Episcopal Church in North Conway. Admission is free. Donations toward the upkeep of the Steinway piano are gratefully accepted. Call or e-mail Ellen Schwindt for more information: ellen.m.schwindt@gmail.com 603-447-2898.

Music as Meditation

or

Where Improvising on Hymn Tunes Might Lead Us

     From time immemorial, musicians everywhere have cultivated the skill of improvising on well-known tunes. Religious services often provide the venue for this kind of inspired music-making. The theme running through February's Music as Meditation is how music, whether complex or simple, transcends systems of belief and opens the door to the soul in ways that the spoken word cannot. 

     This month two friends join me to help us experience the answer to question implied in the subtitle above. Nancy Farris, Christ Church's organist, shares a famous embellishment of a hymn tune by Ralph Vaughan Williams: Rhosymedre. Nancy's sensitive rendering and Christ Church's mellow Cassavant Brothers tracker pipe organ bring out the loveliness of the tune. 

     As if a chance to hear the voice of the pipe organ were not enough, Greg Huang-Dale, a local musician with Minnesota roots, brings us the quiet resonance of a hammered dulcimer. He will play some tunes by Peter Ostroushko, Minnesota composer and mandolinist. 

     I will add two resonant pieces for piano which could be classed as hymns-without-words. The first is by nineteenth-century eccentric composer Eric Satie and the second by Peter Ostroushko. Though crafted in different centuries and on different continents, both pieces provide time for peaceful reflection; each is sparse in its notes but rich in its sonorities. 

     The program is not without complexity. Mrs. Farris will give us the intricate majesty of a Toccata by Leo Sowerby, one of 20th century America's most significant organ composers. The interactions of all that embellishment on tunes you might know will provide its own surprises. Who knows where improvising on hymn tunes might lead?