Newsletter
September 7, 2020
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Upcoming Events
BOARD MEETING
Monday, Sept 14, 2020.
Online Zoom 9:45 A.M.

PROGRAM
Joy Morin - "Effective Virtual Lessons During COVID-19"
Monday, Sept 21, 2020.
Online Zoom 9:45 A.M. Meeting

FESTIVAL OF PIANOS
Will not be held this year.

Fall Classical Recital
Deadline: October 11, 2020
Event: Sunday, October 25, 2020

Fall Pop & Jazz Recital
Chairperson needed

Sonata-Sonatina Festival
Will not be held this year
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A NOTE FROM OUR PRESIDENT
Greetings to all members of NWSMTA!

I hope your summer was spent enjoying travel, time with family, and recreation! I certainly enjoyed this summer - this picture was taken at Wollersheim Winery and Distillery in Wisconsin - one of several adventures!

Back to reality now - As I start my first year as your President, I want to say THANK YOU for entrusting me with this responsibility. I am excited about this new endeavor, and will do my best to guide us all through this time of uncertainty with COVID-19 in our state, and to help us continue with our business of teaching and offering quality benefits to our students and members.

What I AM certain of is the ability of our officers, chairpersons, and members to continue doing their work to benefit the group as a whole. We have a great slate of officers with which I look forward to working:
Rachel Wojcicki - 1st VP/Program Chair
Annie Artinian, 2nd VP/Membership Chair
Midori Kim, Treasurer
Maureen Flood, Recording Secretary
Marie Rutter, Corresponding Secretary
Thank you all for your willingness to serve NWSMTA.

While COVID-19 has forced us to re-think how we teach and operate our studios, it has also given us the opportunity to learn, grow, adapt, and change. This process is still ongoing! I want us all to share this new information and our experiences with each other - no one should have to re-invent the wheel! I personally will start the Fall Semester on August 20 with ONLINE lessons only, since the Schaumburg School District #54 is starting virtually. I will monitor the situation by looking to the local school district, the CDC, the State of Illinois COVID-19 response, and the ISMTA for guidance on returning to in-person lessons.

In June, the Board voted to offer monetary assistance for dues payment to members who apply. As of August 1, we had 4 members who accepted payment of $55 each. We value our members and want to help them to be able to afford membership, which was September 1 this year - $138.

NWSMTA will be offering our students many opportunities for this Fall! All events and meetings for the Fall will be held online, via Zoom.
Classical/Pop & Jazz Recitals (virtual) We need someone to host the Pop & Jazz Recital.

A.I.M. (virtual)
I will be on a Zoom call September 20 to all state presidents regarding guidelines for this.
Beethoven’s Festival (virtual)
This new event will replace the Sonata/Sonatina Festival this fall and commemorate the 250th year of Beethoven’s birth.

Rachel W. has scheduled some outstanding presenters for our virtual meetings this fall! PLEASE attend via Zoom and benefit from the information shared.

In addition to several trips this summer, I also spent time learning how to be a better teacher. You may be aware that the Frances Clark Center and MTNA offer wonderful and informative webinars. I have watched several of these this summer, and encourage you to do so as well. We can’t attend conferences now, and I certainly miss seeing colleagues I’ve known for years, but we can still learn much from these and other online sources! The ISMTA conference this fall will be virtual also. Other well-known teachers like Diane Hidy, Tim Topham, Kristin Yost, Andrea Dow, and Wendy Stevens post useful information on their web sites as well. A recent webinar by Randall Faber on Facebook is interesting. He has different perspectives on teaching virtually - our teaching may be virtual, but the learning is not!  I read a book in our library by Doreen Hall and visited her site, Paloma Piano, for the first time this summer also. Another site I use is musica.com/exercises and musica.com/tools.  I encourage you to take advantage of these free resources!

I hope you are all ready and eager to begin your studio teaching again this Fall, and will participate in our Zoom meetings and events!  Welcome back everyone.

Brenda
OAKTON SIX PIANO ENSEMBLE AUDITIONS IN SEPTEMBER AND OCTOBER
Oakton Six Piano Ensemble
Be part of a unique musical experience as a member of the Oakton Six Piano Ensemble. Auditions for this internationally acclaimed touring group are now being scheduled in September and October. To schedule an appointment or for more information, contact Glenna Sprague, at gsprague@oakton.edu or 847-635-1905.

The group performs repertoire from the classical, ragtime, jazz, and popular periods that is transcribed for the six pianos by the ensemble’s founder and conductor, Glenna Sprague, Professor and Coordinator of Music at Oakton, where she also teaches piano. Performing with a conductor, the rich layered sound of the Six Piano Ensemble is comparable to that of an orchestra, with each member playing a different part of a composition as the melody transfers from pianist to pianist. The ensemble provides an excellent opportunity for those pianists who do not want to perform as soloists, but want to keep up their playing skills and be part of an ensemble situation.

The group has performed both internationally and throughout the United States, including the World Conference of the International Society for Music Education (ISME) at the Royal    Conservatoire of Scotland in Glasgow; College Music Society International Conference in Vienna, Austria; Hawaii Music Teachers Association in Honolulu; MTNA National Conferences in Atlanta and Spokane, GP3 National Conference at University of Oklahoma; Steinway of Chicago Community Concert Series, Navy Pier, Civic Opera House, and the National Conference on Keyboard Pedagogy in Chicago.

This year, the Ensemble is performing a Virtual Concert at the Florida State Music Teachers Association State Conference.
HOSPITALITY
A card was sent to Midori Kim because she had eye surgery.

A card was sent to Yoko Amano because she had to be off her ankle for a week due to hurting it.

I want to thank my fellow teachers in this Association for this beautiful floral plant dropped off by Maureen Flood in honor of our son who died July 18th, 2020 of cardio vascular disease and diabetes. he was 47 yrs. old.

Janice
A NOTE FROM THE EDITOR
I am "virtually" exhausted. I feel like a chrysalis in a cocoon, waiting to emerge. So far, 2020 has taught me a lot about being flexible and creative. I will be so glad when the test is over. 

But until then, I will be grateful for many things that have happened. There have been wonderful online podcasts and webinars on pedagogy and musicianship. I love how our colleagues are there to help others learn new teaching strategies, the world of the internet and to ensure that our students continue to pursue music at a time they need it most. Fewer families traveled this summer, so students' lessons were more regular and they made more progress. Because of online teaching, my students became more independent (and at times more frustrated). But we all learned it was worth the struggle and we were stronger because of it.

There were times I had to laugh at the situation. A mother was trying to find the best location for her camera/phone to view the student's hands (according to my request and directions). For multiple lessons she tried various solutions; such as holding the camera (the jiggling made me nauseated and cramped the mother's hand), building a tower of a table, a chair and a stack of books near the keyboard (it collapsed during the lesson when the cat tried to climb it) and positioning it on top of the grand piano, which they couldn't use because piano tuners were not available (unfortunately the mother bumped the camera before she left the room to get back to work). I ended up with a view out the window. When they came to my house for their first in person lesson and saw my set up, the mother had a revelation. "I never thought to move the keyboard," she exclaimed. Not knowing what their house looked like, I didn't either.

I was having difficulty being able to hear what an eight-year-old student was playing on the piano. I texted her mother, who was no longer in the room, for assistance. The mother, who was in a Zoom meeting for work, texted me back and told me to text the girl's father, who was in the next room. He came into the room to help, but knew less than I did. For the next lesson, I figured out how to rectify the problem and we moved further into the world of music. 

My grandsons have started their online school for the fall. Two or three days each week they come with my son to our house, so we can help with school. They are online from 9:00 AM to 3:30 PM each day, with forty-five minutes for lunch. The teachers seem very patient, but it takes a long time to do everything; mute the mics, put caps on the markers or find the right page. Seth, the first grader, doesn't really understand what school used to be like, since he didn't get to finish the last quarter of kindergarten. Friday, he asked after finishing three math pages, if we could go play the piano. I explained that we were supposed to still be in Math class. He shot back, "We can take my Chrome book with us by the piano." I pictured the class watching Seth playing the piano and thought, "We better not." Five minutes later he asked, "Do you want to play a game?" 

I found out that one of my fifth grade grandsons in California had learned to bring a book and keep it on his lap under the table to read in his dead online time. He reads while the teacher is helping other students learn "sit and wait." 

I feel the students need music now, more than ever. It requires them to be present in the moment. To be able to change their performance in an infinite amount of ways. To challenge themselves to improve every day. And to know that tomorrow, there will be another challenge and they will be better for it. I, also need to remember that every challenge that comes my way will give me an opportunity to become better. 

I find that I have truly missed my colleagues, who can understand what I'm feeling and also support each other with ideas and suggestions. I look forward to seeing you at our virtual meetings each month. Rachel Wojcicki has done a marvelous job securing programs for 2020 and beyond. Joy Morin is a rare opportunity to get help and ideas to improve our alternative teaching during this period. Rachel will also present a program about yoga for musicians that we all can benefit from. We hear much about wearing masks and social distancing. I think it's even more important that we learn to be healthy; to eat well, move, sleep, meditate and connect. 

Deborah Lynch
Editor