Today the conferences officially began and the Exhibition Hall opened. It’s been a hectic day.
At 8 AM, I attended the presentation by Vibrant Music Teaching. Nicola Cantan, the founder of Vibrant Music, wasn’t there, but two of her team members led the session. The presentation was titled “Practice Power: Giggly Games and Creative Concepts for Practice.”
We started the session with a physical warm-up using animal movements. Then we played different rhythm games and moved on to the piano, where they introduced various improvisation activities. They also shared creative ways to play scales and fun, original approaches to practicing repertoire.
I highly recommend all of Nicola Cantan’s materials, which you can find at Colourful Keys, Vibrant Piano Teaching and Vivid Practice.
The next session I attended was titled “Musicians as Health Workers? Developing a New Creative Workforce in Community and Clinical Health”, presented by Sarah Hoover.
This talk explored the growing importance of the arts in health, the most recent developments in the field, and how musicians are beginning to take part in multidisciplinary teams that promote well-being in both clinical and community settings.
Traditional music education has not prepared musicians for these kinds of challenges. That’s why new approaches and training resources are needed—so that musicians can meaningfully contribute to these initiatives.
After that, I attended a keyboard lab titled “Integrating Improvisation into Piano Lessons: Hands-On Sessions.” The workshop took place in a room equipped with sixteen digital pianos, allowing all attendees to participate actively.
The three presenters—Joseph Harkins, Agnieszka Lasko, and Kristina Lee—shared countless ideas for incorporating improvisation into piano lessons.
Katherine Fisher’s talk, “Education is an Atmosphere, a Discipline, a Life: Applying General Education Philosophy to Piano Teaching,” connected the fascinating ideas of 19th-century British educator Charlotte Mason with selected pieces from the Piano Safari catalog and the overall Piano Safari philosophy.
Next came the session by jazz pianist Jeremy Siskind, titled “6 Blues Improvisation Lessons for Beginners.”
It’s always a pleasure to hear Jeremy speak. This time, he shared a wealth of blues ideas we can bring directly into our teaching.
As I mentioned on Day 0, the number of sessions and activities on offer is huge—but there’s simply no way to do it all. This is just a glimpse of what I managed to see in a single day.
I also spent some time in the Exhibition Hall, where I met lots of interesting people. But I’ll save that for another post.
In the evening, I had dinner with the PIANO SAFARI team: Katherine and Christopher Fisher, Chee-Hwa Tan, Janna Williamson, Amy Glennon, Wendy Blackwood, and myself. It was the perfect way to end the day—we had a great time sharing a classic Chicago-style pizza. It was absolutely delicious!
More to come tomorrow…
0 Comments