 Well, it's the spring and it's time to get ready for Honor Roll 2021! I'm so excited!
As many of our students know, Honor Roll is a BIG deal around here. Mostly because it's HARD and the end result is amazing. We've changed up a few things this year. First, I want to say that making it on the Honor Roll is not easy. It's for the student who is ready to practice harder than ever before. If everyone was able to do it, it wouldn't be so amazing would it? Just like Honor Roll at school, those who rise to the occasion, practice hard, and complete all of their work each week will be on the Honor Roll and receive one of two prizes. Here at this year's requirements:
This year, we are giving our students an opportunity to get extra points. Students are limited to 12 total points for the entire duration of Honor Roll.
The 2 prizes are the composer bust for 65 points and higher. Those that get 50-64 points will receive the metal bookmark. Awards will be announced at the Spring Recital. Good luck!! Work hard! Let your teacher know if you have any questions!
0 Comments
 We are wanting to encourage our students to listen to different and important musical works. Your Assignment: Listen to the link below, share with your family, and add comments to let us know what you think! This one is Holst's The Planets: Jupiter Time Period: 1916 Picture a loud, jolly, kind, & generous king, feasting & dancing with his subjects at his castle.  We are wanting to encourage our students to listen to different and important musical works. Your Assignment: Listen to the link below, share with your family, and add comments to let us know what you think! This one is Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue Time Period: 1924 Gershwin's original version for two pianos. This was immediately orchestrated -- for the premiere of the piece! -- by Ferde Grofé.  We are wanting to encourage our students to listen to different and important musical works. Your Assignment: Listen to the link below, share with your family, and add comments to let us know what you think! This one is Chopin's Minute Waltz (Op. 64 no. 1) Time Period: Romantic This famous waltz is NOT playable in one minute, though it is fairly brief! The legend is that a visitor challenged Chopin to write a song about Chopin's little dog, which was at that moment chasing its tail! Perhaps Chopin started improvising then & there, & then developed the full piece, later on. -Stathia Orwig Well, I know I'm not alone when I say I'm a little hesitant in making big plans for 2021! Ha! But after the year, 2020, how can anyone blame us? Normally, I make my yearly goals and do what I can to make them happen. However, this year, I'm just going to be content with seeing how things go and using what I learned in 2020 to help me stay focused on the positives. In 2020, I had big plans! MSS was going very strong and I wanted to keep that going! However, our plans for the spring went splat. We had a full studio with full teacher schedules. Then, everything shut down. We had to go completely virtual. It was only going to be for a week or two, then a month, then 6 more weeks...looking around, small business were suffering and closing! I went in to overdrive last spring. There was not a chance that this virus was going to take out what I had spent years building. I know every small business was thinking the very same thing. We had some student who just completely stopped lessons because they wouldn't even try virtual. I'm not gonna lie, this made me very sad, and even angry. But, there was not a whole lot I could do about that, so I just kept moving forward. We did our first ever virtual recital and I think it was good and bad. It pushed our students on a very different level and some students recorded hundreds of times! The video thing was stressful! The good thing is that it taught them "how" to practice and all of those times of recording were "thoughtful" practicing. And I think it's great that these students wanted a great finished product! Also on the plus side is that we have a souvenir from COVID lessons.  The same thing happened through the summer, and yet it was different. Music lessons actually became more of a priority. We were not competing with camps, sports, or vacations. Because so many people were not traveling, they chose to do something they could do at home. Some signed up for the minimum number of summer lessons, but when this virus just kept spreading it's love, those people decided to stay home and take more lessons! How great is that? We may not have added as many students as we normally do during the summer, but we taught 200 more lessons than we did the summer before! I'm serious! Some started to come back in person, though many stayed virtual cause it was convenient AND it does work! Fall 2020 had me a little worried as well. Many families decided that with their kids being virtual for school that music was just too much to add. That's a lot of screen time. I get it. However, others felt it was a good break from school. So, we added more students in October and November. Our holiday recital was a little different than the spring recital. We made it less stressful by adding holiday cheer and a "fun" contest. We wanted PJs and holiday decorations, and you could feel the positively-fun energy from so many of the videos. What a wonderful way of spreading musical cheer!  So, what have we learned? No matter how overwhelmed I get with work and the business, I always come back to Music SO Simple. Simple. We've gotta keep things simple. We learned that music making IS a priority! And where in years past, private lessons are not as fun because it's not a "social" thing. Well, now, we have learned that this is a good thing (I mean, duh!)! It's something we can do on our own! As teachers, we have learned soooo much about how we communicate. No longer can we just pick up our students hands and put them in the correct place. Nope. We've got to talk through it. We are making our students work just a little harder. They have had to listen as well! But all in all, we have learned that music is just so important.
So, for 2021, as we cannot "plan" like we have in the past, I want to keep it simple. I want to be grateful for these simple things we have learned in this past year. I want to spread as much musical joy as possible. I want to be inspired every day to keep going, and music helps me do that. My relationships with my students inspire me. If you ask any teacher what they missed while things were shut down, you will hear that they missed their students. We love what we give to them and what they give to us. If we have learned anything this past year, it's that we can't control. We have learned about the simple things in life and we have adjusted. Cheers to our 2021. May it be everything you need it to be!  We are wanting to encourage our students to listen to different and important musical works. Your Assignment: Listen to the link below, share with your family, and add comments to let us know what you think! This one is Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker: Dance of the Sugarplum Fairies Time Period: Romantic This is a beautiful ballet performance! I love how even though it's a slower tempo, it's still very light and dancy! -Stathia Orwig This is a new sort of blog for us, but I thought it would be fun to look back at all of the good things we saw through 2020! Through the year, we probably post around 500 different posts on our social media. So, I sorted through them and have listed our Top 10 posts of 2020! Enjoy!
We are wanting to encourage our students to listen to different and important musical works. Your Assignment: Listen to the link below, share with your family, and add comments to let us know what you think! Our sixth one is Waldteufel's "Skater's Waltz (Les Patineurs Valse)" Time Period: Romantic, 1882 Style/Mood: gliding, leaping fun! This is a super fun performance! Can you hear the skaters leaping, in the middle of the piece? Does it make you dance?  It's no secret that this year has been a year we don't ever want to return to. 2021 HAS to be better, right? But, it's got me thinking a bit these past few weeks as I've been working on our Winter Un-Recital Recital. I want to end 2020 on a high note! I've been working on holiday pieces with most all of my students. I say every year that the best part of playing piano is being able to play holiday music! It's the one time a year that I personally make time to sit down and just play the piano. It fills my home with beautiful music, it makes me happy, and it never fails that I sing along while playing! This year, as I'm teaching my students their holiday piece(s), it feels different. It feels different because so much has been taken away from us. Last week, while watching the CMA Awards, Eric Church accepted his award and really spoke to so many of us:“This award this year, at least for me, has been about the loss of this year. Loss of life, loss of playing shows, loss of freedom, loss of kids being in school. You know what the win is? The win is we were all here tonight together in person, live, not on zoom,” he went on. “It’s going to be music that brings us out of this. That is the one thing that is going to save the entire world. Politicians are about division, music is about unity. And I promise you, it’s going to take everyone in this room to unite.” I think he's very right. The other day, as I was teaching a preschool music class, I stopped and just watched the kids singing, smiling, and happy without a care in the world during a world-wide pandemic(!). This is proof that there is still so much happiness out there (especially in our children) and that music can bring a smile to anyone's face. It brings us together all year long, but especially in the holiday season.  This year, more than ever, I am thankful for what I have. I want to enjoy the little things like playing Christmas carols, teaching them, spreading my love of them to my students. I think all of the teachers are feeling this right now. Normally, this is a stressful time for us as we pick pieces, memorize, and spread all of the carols out among recitals. But, we have thrown those rules out the window and it is so gratifying to say "Yes! Let's learn another carol!" even if 5 other students are playing the same one. As we enter this holiday season, take time to listen to music! Fill your hearts with family and music because it's the one thing that cannot be taken away. Let's really end this 2020 year on a high note!   We are wanting to encourage our students to listen to different and important musical works. Your Assignment: Listen to the link below, share with your family, and add comments to let us know what you think! Our fifth one is Debussy's "Arabesque no. 1" Time Period: Impressionistic, 1891 Style/Mood: dreamy beauty What do you imagine when you hear this gentle, dreamy piece? |
Archives
January 2021
Categories
All
|
RSS Feed