Why I Teach Children

From a statement I recently released about my teaching:
An actively concertizing pianist, I teach children to play the piano because I love their unspoiled responses to sound from which I continue to learn how music works.   My goal is to lead young learners to savor the sound of the piano, to hear how it is the root and source for all the great music written for this endlessly fascinating instrument.  

We start with music of our time because those are the sounds most familiar from movies and other media.  The beginnings set the tone for life; and live music becomes an integral part of their life, whatever life they choose.

Mutual musical attentiveness is the essence of the art practiced here.  Listening and being listened to form a reliable basis for personal and inter-personal musical focus from the very outset. *  When sound comes first, music becomes as much the stuff of dreams as of conceptual experience.  The child learns how his or her responses yield insight into a composer’s intentions.

*I also coach parents and their young children--even infants--on music as a powerful interactive bond. 

One is Never too Young for Interpersonal Listening

Like vegetables, listening is in danger of getting a bad reputation by being canned most of the time.

I am frequently asked whether two is too young to start music instruction.  It all depends on what you mean by "music."  If it is canned it is not music.  If it is alive, interpersonal, and constantly variable (as is all real interpersonal activity) it is never too early.

Parental listening is at much in danger of a canning process as music itself.  I have taught some quite gifted children who will not practice because they are so aware of the tinned ear in the next room.  These children do progress but mostly as an internal process.  Nothing wrong with that, mind you, but it's not as much fun.

Therefore, I am offering coaching for parents together with their young children on how to cultivate an environment in which music is definitely out of the can -- the musical equivalent of the locavore.  I have experience with this as I taught my singer/songwriter daughter to sing from, literally, day one, just out of curiosity to see what would happen.  You can see for yourself what happened at www.rachellegarniez.com. 

Perforrnance and the Interpersonal

It strikes me that listening primarily to recorded music is like playing ping pong with a dead ball.  Currently in the midst of a series of intimate in-house recitals, I am stunned at how the attention of a close-up audience  affects every detail of performance. 

There is a collusion at work here: Performers are getting accustomed to playing a certain way regardless of who is listening just as listeners are getting used to feeling superfluous.

The other day I was in an intimate performance situation in which someone seated second row center was energetically sketching, paying not the slightest attention to what was happening not five feet away, and certainly unaware that the performers were super-aware of her incredibly distracting activity. 

Time and Tech

It was common knowledge back in the day when recordings were first produced--not that I was around to witness their birth--that tempi were often determined by the amount of time available per side of those clunky disks.

Such industrial tempi have affected us as listeners in ways we have yet to fathom.  The industry continues to manipulate time in the interests of production, so it is up to us artists and audience to notice how our inner musical metronomes are being manipulated.

In this CD era I notice that the dead space between tracks between movements of a sonata or symphony has now become standard concert practice, despite the fact that Beethoven and Brahms, for example, went to great pains to enliven those "silences" by carefully notated metric as well as tonal transitions, even subtly indicating the degree of resolution in "final" chords. 

What will it take for us to put life back into this essential musical element?

Time into Music

This morning I had a major revelation about life time in relation to musical time: A dear old friend contacted me the other day resuscitating fond memories from many years ago.  Overwhelmed, I found myself playing the Schubert G major Sonata with the Molto moderato e cantabile first movement in 12/8.  The tempo took on a whole new meaning as savoring past and present revealed something essential about sustained harmonies.

Ordinarily I am far too impatient to let my sense of forward motion be interfered with to that extent, but this time it was as if Schubert was allowing time -- all time -- to stand most powerfully still.

About that Spark

I have been told that my work on Tonal Refraction is about "what gets trained out of us" -- us being professional musicians. 

I firmly believe it is possible to teach children while maintaining the spark.    It also seems clear to me that the young musicians who opt to go downtown (i.e., to Brooklyn) are keeping the spark alive for what will eventually be called our culture.

Curiously, more and more Music Theory dissertations are being written about that "other" music.

Close to the Spark

This is how I describe my approach to teaching young children to play the piano.  The spark is inside of each child, principally in their ear/imagination, and also coming from the inexhaustible riches of the piano sound. 

After decades of figuring out how to teach children to play in a way that enriches their lives forever, I am at last confident that the connection between the hand and the ear lies in the sense of touch, and that this can be awakened and refined from day one.  Once awakened it provides a reliable link to creativity in reading the music of others as well as in making music of one's own. 

I am actively seeking students to fill slots vacated by moves away to college, to new homes out of state.  If you know of possible candidates please direct them to this blog or have them contact me directly.