Dear fellow friends and teachers,

Here we are in a new year, full of possibilities, giving us a chance to start fresh and let go of things that are not useful anymore - old music, worn out teaching practices - and claim something new - a new color for our teaching studio or a fresh perspective maybe.

We have a wonderful opportunity this Monday, January 19th, at our meeting, to gain some new insights from our very own distinguished member Janice Razaq, who will be speaking to us about effective and successful critiquing in an adjudication situation. This is timely and will be helpful, as our students' AIM Exams come up at the end of the month. Many of you do judge in other situations too, and we all critique our students on a daily level, so it's good to consider what kind of language we can use to encourage, instruct and inspire whomever we are "judging".

The Festival of Pianos Committee had our yearly meeting last week to choose some new repertoire for the 2015 Festival, and after trying many duets, came up with a fantastic list of great variety, both in style and difficulty, which we will be presenting to you in the near future.

An interesting event, American Grands, that you might like to attend, is coming up next weekend, Saturday, January 24th, at Elgin Community College. It is comprised of 12 grand pianos on stage, with 24 pianists playing each piece! Some of our members perform in it each year, which makes it fun. More than 400 pianists of all ages and skill levels will perform during American Grands XX. Performances are at 1:00, 4:00 and 7:00 pm. Tickets for all performances in the ECC Arts Center are available online at tickets.elgin.edu or at the ECC box office, or call (847) 622-0300.

Maybe some of you saw an article in the Daily Herald in the last few weeks about piano study, and piano sales in our time, and how that's changed. It was titled "Piano Stores Closing As Fewer Children Taking Up Instrument" and was in the January 2nd issue of the Daily Herald. I read this and was upset with the focus of the article! It is probably accurate in the things it states, about numbers of instruments sold, but what I would like to dispute is the accepting the attitudes of some of the people interviewed. For example, from the article:  Larry Fine, a Boston-based piano technician, consultant and author, said it is an indication of a changing society. "Computer technology has just changed everything about what kids are interested in," said Fine, who also publishes a website offering consumer information on new and used pianos. "People are interested in things that don't take much effort, so the idea of sitting and playing an hour a day to learn piano is not what kids want to do." Maybe in his experience this is true, and maybe in some of our experiences with our students we have seen this too. It just seems to me that this is what we want to work against in our teaching, this apathy, and instead we work on helping our students build up their focus, their interest, their endurance, their memory, and their ability to consider a long musical idea and then be able to present it when they play. If we give in to popular culture and the dissolution of using our minds for more than a minute at a time, we are doing a great disservice to our students!

As 2015 begins, I hope that your holidays were restful and you were able to spend some time with the special people in your lives.  I'm looking forward to picking up where we left off, strengthening our collaborative bonds, getting to know you all better, learning something new about our beloved vocation of Music and hope you are too!

Your colleague in inspiring musical learning,

Robin

Robin Meredith-Kramer

NWSMTA President