Sharlene is one of my Wednesday afternoon ladies. She is a model student, practicing diligently every week and trying her hand at many different genres.

Another adult student who is a real pleasure to teach. This year Shirley has been studying Nat King Cole, and more recently, The Beatles. Shirley’s choice of repertoire always puts me in a good mood. You just can’t be miserable and play smooth, beautiful pop standards like Mona Lisa, L-O-V-E, and Michelle every week.

This is Mo’s most recent duet and solo. I love the small, satisfied smile at the end of My Heart Will Go On. Adult students are the bomb!

Here’s Emiko! She recently passed into Level 2, which means playing hands together, using a metronome, and playing duets with me every week. She is a funny little jokester who loves borrowing my highlghters and highlighting everything in sight on all her songs.

Maya is the youngest student I teach right now at just 5 years old. She has a 15 minute lesson after her big sister and learns one little song every week. She loves putting putting stickers on the songs she has mastered!

Here’s Rebecca! Currently she is working on a transcription of ‘Mercy’ by Shawn Mendes. She is also a hockey and soccer kid, and I’m always impressed she finds the time to practice. 45 minutes with Rebecca always flies by and we work and learn hard from the time we sit down at the piano until I must dash away to my next lesson.

Here is Ella, progressing beautifully, playing hands together with a steady beat and a ton of confidence and determination. She devours a lot of material every week and often does more, goes beyond, and adds more complexity than I ask for if she masters her assignment with time to spare before her next lesson.

Evan is a very interesting, funny, and smart person to spend 45 minutes every Wednesday evening with. He likes to memorize his songs, a wonderful skill that is hard to come by for many. As we go along and the material gets more complex, there are more elements to memorize (dynamics, tempo changes, form) and he is always up for the challenge. He is currently working on Raider’s March by John Williams, the theme from Raiders of The Lost Ark, a piece of music that is considerably more complex than all of his other assigned material. I love it when a student chooses to take on something more difficult than what I would have chosen for them. It shows real confidence and a high level of engagement with the material. Once you discover John Williams, it’s hard to step away! That man has composed an enormous catalog of thrilling, fantastic, very famous music. Accordingly, Evan’s next piece of chosen repertoire is likely to be a transcription of Imperial Death March from Star Wars and I for one am looking forward to humming it every week as I drive home after his lesson. Dum dum dum, dum de DUM, dum de DUM…

Here’s Leo! Currently we are working on a transcription of “Can’t Slow Down” by Hedley. He’s got the right hand melody down very well, and he can sing all the words. I have him to thank for adding a Hedley song to my Guilty Pleasures playlist, and hell didn’t even have to freeze over. Live and learn, people. Live and learn.

Aidan is such a pleasure to teach. Every week it seems like he listens more carefully, exerts a bigger effort, and fearlessly tries new things without complaint.

Here is Sarah, playing two of her pieces that she prepared for her Royal Conservatory Grade 1 exam. The first one is called Mist, and the next is called Andante In G Minor. Sarah’s piano skills grew and improved a tremendous amount during her exam preparations. She has set her sights high and is currently studying for her Grade 3 exam.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: The Beatles made some serious music. But generally we don’t think of them in those terms because they were ‘pop’ and ‘rock n roll’ and had number one hits, all sterotypical indicators of ‘not serious’. That was part of their immense genius though. Disguising thoroughly challenging music (melodically, harmonically, structurally, lyrically) with irresistable catchiness and boyish sexiness. Here is Mo and her take on one of their most elegant pieces. A piece that seemed impenetrable a few weeks before I might add, but her usual unstoppable determination to study it and understand it paid off handsomely, as it always does.

Here is a practice version of Old Man River still in progress, having studied it for only one week.

I wish I had 10 Sharlenes to teach every week. She is an adult beginner, retired, always busy with piano practice, travelling, and spending time with her family and friends. Sharlene is a calm, gentle presence whose intelligence is greater than mine in many areas. When I asked her for a reference letter for my application package to the British Columbia Registered Music Teachers Association, I found out she has a Master’s degree in Adult Education and had an illustrous career in education, politics and government. In addition to raising two children and being married for 40 years. She had never mentioned any of this to me (except her children). It’s a wonderful thing to meet a person who is secure enough to not feel the need to remind you about their achievements all the time. This humility made me like her even more. I always look forward to teaching Sharlene, and I’m inspired every time I leave her house. She has said plenty of things in a casual offhanded manner that explode in my brain and reverberate for days.
Sharlene is the only adult student I teach who performs at my twice yearly piano recitals. There’s nothing wrong with not performing, which is what all of my other adult students choose. I understand the fear and anxiety that comes with performing and if you would rather not feel that and play the piano strictly for your own pleasure, I am with you. Sharlene dresses to the nines and often plays first. Her husband and her grown children and their spouses come to watch her. Their love for her is palpable. When she finshes her songs – she always plays perfectly – and sits down with them I think, that is a beautiful and complete group. A happy family who loves to support each other. I hope I have many more years of being with Sharlene every Tuesday afternoon, teaching and learning in equal measure

This is a very tricky duet to play perfectly. You really can’t mess around with The Beatles. Their music demands full awareness and concentration. How nice that it is also melodic, catchy, and emotional.

Here she is playing Paper Moon hands together, progressing beautifully.

It’s always fun to make some new videos with Rosie. This year we have played many challenging duets in genres from musical theatre to classical to folk to jazz. In her solo work she is gaining tons of proficiency with counting in compound time signatures.

Colleen started lessons this past September with me as an adult beginner. When I met her I had an immediate sense of “this is my kind of lady!” and 6 months later I look forward to every Thursday afternoon I spend with her very much. That’s a really cool thing about adult students. When you click with somebody a rapport grows, and it’s almost like making a new friend. In fact I have been very fortunate with my adult students. Almost all of them I wish I could be friends with in real life outside of my professional relationship with them. Colleen falls into that category. It has brought me a lot of joy and satisfaction to witness her breakthroughs with the piano one by one. Memorizing notes, learning how to read rhythms, playing hands together, there are so many milestones (if the student and teacher understand each other) early on in studying an instrument. Colleen has also made me think deeply about the challenges adult beginner students have and how to effectively help people through these as a teacher. Listening is a big part of it I think. Reassurance, encouragement, and reminders that perfection is not what we’re striving for here. All of my adult students are highly accomplished professionals. In my observation the challenges they face in learning how to play the piano stem from struggling to reconcile being a beginner in this one area with their expertise in their professional (and home, and volunteer) lives. When you are accustomed to the feeling of competence and success and the tangible rewards associated with that it can be very disorienting to experience the struggles of being a beginner. Some adults find this intolerable and they quit early on. But not Colleen. I hope I can have the pleasure of teaching her and learning from her for years to come.

Leo started piano lessons this past September. It’s a real pleasure to start from the very beginning with a sweet, smart little human. Recently we have completed a big project, learning the melody for Summer of 69 by Bryan Adams and playing it on the piano while singing the words. Leo’s dad wrote out the lyrics some manuscript paper and I helped Leo figure out every single note and write its name below the lyrics. At first it was mostly me transcribing the notes, but Leo caught on quickly and instinctively absorbed the key and tonal centre and was soon dictating 4 bars at a time of melody notes that we worked feverishly to set down in the heat of battle. This is all pretty impressive for a six year old person.
One day during this project we had a great conversation. Leo had been studying the lyrics and listening to the song between lessons. I sat down beside him one Wednesday afternoon and unpacked my bag of tricks while he fired off questions.
” What is a summer of 69?”
” It means the songwriter is telling a story about the summer of 1969, which was a long time ago, like 46 years ago”
” What’s a real six string?”
” He’s talking about a guitar. The very first guitar he ever bought.”
” Why do his fingers bleed?”
” He loved his new guitar and played it so much his fingers started to bleed because they were not used to the sharp feeling of the strings”.
“Wow. And then he played in a band?”
“Yeah, with some guys from school. They tried really hard”.
“What happened with his band?”
“Well, Jimmy quit and Jody got married.”
“Oh. That’s sad. No band for him.”
“Yes it is, but it was the best time of his life.”
“That’s good. What is he doing now?”

What is the guy from Summer of 69 doing these days? He would be in his 60’s now. Is he happily retired with an armful of kids and grandkids? Or is he drinking himself to death slowly in front of a flickering tv of late night infomercials? Does he still pull out the old six string once in a while? I’d like to think he does.
I wish I had taken a picture of Leo’s manuscript paper, which says SUMMER OF 69 at the top and right underneath that “By Bryan Adams and LEO”. Here is he playing the songs he learned for our recent piano recital, at which I played and sang Summer of 69, which introduced him this song in the first place. You just never know what is going to stick in a kid’s brain.