My semester teaching at the Syracuse University’s Strasbourg center is almost over. My students played their final concert and have begun returning to the U.S., and our teenaged daughters are wrapping up their studies at their European high school. Our family’s last hurrah will be a two-week vacation through Provence, northwest Italy, and Switzerland before [Read more...]
Author Archives: Fred Karpoff
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This winter I am teaching at Syracuse University’s Strasbourg campus. Living in a foreign country has led to many changes in my daily routine. One of the most striking is the amount of focused time I have been able to give to the piano. Every morning at eight o’clock, five to six days a week, I walk [Read more...]
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For the past four years, I have asked all my students to complete the Keirsey Temperament Sorter (KTS-II) at http://keirsey.com. After they take this test, I have them write a detailed report on the experience. Was it valuable? Do they agree with the evaluation they received? The Keirsey test (and students’ evaluation of their results) provides insights [Read more...]
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This month is conference season. I’m traveling to four state music teachers conventions—performing, presenting and meeting fellow teachers. I so enjoy the interaction with teachers from around the country and the chance to learn from one another by sharing our common challenges and ideas. One of the top challenges is understanding and conveying basic biomechanics [Read more...]
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Recently, while coaching a violin and piano duo, it struck me just how common it is for musicians to “miss the forest for the trees,” particularly in regards to the essential rhythm of the music. We were working on Kreisler’s Praeludium and Allegro. In the Kreisler Allegro, the violinist presented a sixteenth-note passage in this [Read more...]
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It’s audition season at my university and, if this year is like previous ones, very few of the applicants will be strong sight-readers. Without question, it’s challenging for most teachers to regularly incorporate sight-reading during lessons, what with technical studies, theory, musicianship, and repertoire—let alone harmonization, transposition, improvisation and other keyboard skills. But since one [Read more...]
For many years, it was believed that today was Edward MacDowell’s 150th birthday, but the evidence points to it actually being his 151st. MacDowell was the first American composer of international stature, although it seems increasingly rare to hear his music today. For several years, I championed his beautiful Sonata Eroica, and recorded it along [Read more...]
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As we drove up, the clashing sounds of two out-of-tune upright pianos greeted us. We were fifteen minutes late, but Rebecca, my wife, and I were the only ones who seemed to notice. We got out of the truck and entered a two-room building where thirty students were waiting for me to present a master [Read more...]
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“The secret of rhythmic playing” [I pause briefly, for emphasis], “is to be as late as possible while still playing in time.” This is a maxim I have repeated hundreds of times. In fact, it is the only verbatim quote I knowingly use in my teaching. And I credit my source: Leon Fleisher. Although he [Read more...]
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My recent post “Imagery, Emotion, and Imagination” elicited many wonderful comments. In particular, Seymour Bernstein’s opening statement is especially consonant with my thinking: “This advice of listing adjectives can be extremely helpful to students. But unless one makes a physical connection to musical feeling, all the adjectives in the world and spoken metaphors at lessons [Read more...]