I’ve been enjoying this blog for nearly a year already, as I find great value in being able to exchange ideas with other independent music teachers. It’s very easy to feel isolated, and it’s been interesting finding out how many of us have the same challenges and pleasures, as well as having the opportunity to benefit from new ideas and resources.

I’m going to be contributing ideas from the point of view of a life coach who is also a longtime performer and teacher, and I’m excited to have the opportunity to try out my ideas. Here’s a link to my first post.

He knows what’s important— the purity, the essence of the music. There’s nothing like not being able to play the piano for forty years to make one appreciate each sound. Each opportunity to create beauty. There’s no excuse, no need for artifice. Each moment has purpose.

Years of absence and silence have refined the desire to create sound. Decades of trying and failing to regain health, prestige, career have bruised and beaten the ego to a pulp. Only the heart of the music remains, as only the soul of man survives.

Now he wants to play Bach, Chopin, Schubert. Why play music that is purely virtuosic? He learned long ago that maximum notes per second are not where it’s at.

“Before, I was just a two-handed piano player,” he says. “What happened to me has expanded my life, my awareness, my humanity.”

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xgyz0XqDEEA

The other day, I was privileged to meet Katinka Scipiades Daniel, an eminent piano teacher and almost solely responsible for introducing the Kodály Method of music education to America back in the 1960′s. Katinka, now in her 90′s, joyful, sprightly and alert, welcomed members of the Kodály Association of Southern California for a potluck lunch, where we had chance to hear stories and reminiscences of all kinds.

Katinka’s own history is interesting– her husband Ernö Daniel was an eminent concert pianist in Hungary, giving concerts internationally, when the Communists took over Hungary in the 1940′s. As he happened to be abroad at that time, he decided not to return, although Katinka and her children were still in Hungary. Ernö went to America, accepting a position first at Wichita Falls and then at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and eventually after twelve years, his wife and children were permitted to join him.

The family all flourished in America– both parents becoming renowned as teachers, their son and daughter eventually becoming well-respected and successful doctors. Katinka has made an interesting video on how to combine the Kodály method with piano teaching, which also contains valuable examples of her technical methods. She has also written excellent books on teaching Kodály from Kindergarten upwards. However, her most lasting impact has been the training of some wonderful Kodály teachers in California, who are now passing on her legacy. I’m excited to join them.