Sometimes younger piano students have a difficult time relating to musical styles of the 20th and 21st centuries. This workshop will present an array of “modern” compositions that might be appropriate and attractive to students in early intermediate through early advanced levels. An enormous variety of compositional idioms were used between 1900 and 2021: neoromantic, impressionistic, atonal, neoclassical, aleatoric, jazzy, and on and on. This workshop will cover an assortment of works from this time period, organized according to three difficulty levels—early/mid intermediate, mid intermediate/late intermediate, and early advanced. Composers of the canon, such as Bartók and Prokofiev, will be juxtaposed against lesser-known composers such as Nikolai Rakov (1908-1990) and distinguished composers of a younger generation such as Lera Auerbach (b. 1973). Piano music from Africa and the African diaspora, China, and the Americas will be covered as well. Of course, there is no way to cover 120 years of worthwhile music in a two-hour workshop. But, hopefully, this event will ignite curiosity and spark further exploration of this gigantic topic.
About the Presenter
Pianist John Salmon (johnsalmon.com), on the faculty of the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, has distinguished himself on four continents, as both a classical and jazz artist. His performances have been heard on many radio stations in the U.S., including National Public Radio, WNYC in New York, WFMT in Chicago, and KUSC in Los Angeles; and on the national radio stations of Australia, Brazil, Canada, England, Finland, France, Germany, Holland, Hungary, Italy, Moldova, New Zealand, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the Ukraine. Salmon is a frequent guest performer at festivals in the U.S. and Europe, having appeared at the Piccolo Spoleto Festival (Charleston, South Carolina), Piano Festival Northwest (Portland, Oregon), Interlochen Piano Festival (Interlochen, Michigan), Festival for Creative Pianists (Denver, Colorado), Festival Internacional de Música del Mediterráneo (Cartagena, Spain), and the International Bartók Festival (Szombathely, Hungary). He has toured China six times, with concerts in Beijing, Shanghai, Shenyang, and Hangzhou. Other special appearances include an all-Liszt recital in Mexico City for the American Liszt Society and an all-Brubeck recital in Washington, DC for the Music Teachers National Association, after which he jammed at two pianos with Dave Brubeck in a spontaneous version of Duke Ellington’s “Things Ain’t What They Used to Be.” He has also been the featured artist for the Music Teachers National Association state conferences in California (CAPMT), Virginia (VMTA), and Minnesota (MMTA). He has recorded four compact discs of Dave Brubeck’s classical piano music, on the Phoenix, Naxos, and Albany labels. Brubeck dedicated two compositions to Salmon—“The Salmon Strikes” and “Bach Again.” Salmon’s CD of piano pieces by Nikolai Kapustin is also on the Naxos label, and his CD of his own jazz compositions, Salmon Is A Jumpin’, was released by Albany Records in November 2010. As guest lecturer, Salmon has spoken on a wide array of topics including “Beethoven’s Shadow” (The Juilliard School), “September 1828: Schubert’s Last Three Piano Sonatas” (Boston Conservatory), and “Adding Notes to Classical Scores” (Conservatorio de Música, Morelia, Mexico). As author, he has covered such subjects as “What Brubeck Got From Milhaud” and “Urtext, que me veux tu?” and his articles have appeared in American Music Teacher, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Clavier, College Music Society Newsletter, Piano & Keyboard, and Piano Today. His book The Piano Sonatas of Carl Loewe is published by Peter Lang. Add On Bach (addonbach.com), called “playful, creative, and unique” by Clavier Companion, contains Salmon’s added lines, varied reprises, and cadenzas to keyboard works of J.S. Bach. Jazz Up the Inventions (jazzuptheinventions.com) and Jazz Up the Sinfonias (jazzupthesinfonias.com) have Salmon’s jazzy accompaniments to J.S. Bach’s Two-Part Inventions and Three-Part Inventions. Jazz Standards (salmonstandards.com) has his arrangements of twelve classic pieces from the American songbook, including “All of Me,” “Blue Moon,” and “Over the Rainbow.”
About the Series – Creating Young Artists, Teaching Style for Students in Early Intermediate through Early Advanced Levels
We value the commitment of piano teachers to serve our students with professionalism and teaching expertise. Committed to education, we proudly present this complimentary three lecture series on wellness. To ensure the health and safety of our clinicians and participants, this year’s programs will be available to attend in-person and via live stream.
Students who are available to participate due to flexible remote learning schedules are also welcome to attend! The live stream link will be available on our website at ruggeropiano.com prior to each presentation. These workshops are complimentary – we invite you to join us in-person or via Live Stream!
We hope you can join us in the fight to save lives at our first ever Red Cross Blood Drive, hosted at our Bosendorfer Hall! Appointments for giving power red or whole blood will be available from 10:30AM-2:30PM on Wednesday, March 2nd, and there will be a drawing for Ruggero Piano door prizes for those who participate. See you there!
About the Series
Developing the Total Musician – Teaching Essential Skills: Improvisation, Accompanying, and Sight Reading
We value the commitment of piano teachers to serve our students with professionalism and teaching expertise. Committed to education, we proudly present this complimentary three-part lecture series. To ensure the health and safety of our clinicians and participants, this year’s programs will be available to attend in-person and via live stream.
Students who are available to participate due to flexible remote learning schedules are also welcome to attend! The live stream link will be available on our website at ruggeropiano.com prior to each presentation. These workshops are complimentary – we invite you to join us in-person or via Live Stream!
About This Presentation
Developing the skills to teach Improvisation can seem mysterious. The necessary skills to encourage a love of improvisation can be enhanced with learning the scale and chord work to open up possibilities at the piano. Altering melodies with rhythm or re-phrasing the musical line will be demonstrated. Written harmonies can be embellished with scales! Teacher participation is encouraged for hands-on learning during the presentation.
About the Presenter
Pianist Ed Paolantonio has been described as an “all consuming musician…(whose) solo struck sparks all around the room.” — Owen Cardle (News & Observer, Raleigh, NC) “He’s outstanding, …talented and prolific”, said R. C. Smith (Durham Morning Herald). Joe Vanderford (Spectator, Raleigh, NC) wrote of “Paolantonio’s sound … full of arpeggios, utilizing every one of the eighty-eights”.
Paolantonio hails from New York City, but lives now in Durham, NC. Besides earning a BS in Music Ed. from Suny Potsdam, and an MM. in Performance from UNC Chapel Hill, he studied 3½ years with world famous jazz pianist, teacher, and composer Lennie Tristano. He has been composing, arranging and performing jazz professionally since 1971, and has accompanied many jazz giants, including Dizzy Gillespie, Slide Hampton, Clark Terry, Lee Konitz, Curtis Fuller, Jimmy Heath, Claudio Roditi, Tom Harrell, Woody Shaw and Emily Remler.
Paolantonio has toured North Carolina with jazz drummer Max Roach. As an artist on the NC Touring Program, he performed with his much-acclaimed jazz vocal group, String of Pearls. He toured the Middle East for USIA with vibraphonist Jon Metzger, and has been the recipient of two North Carolina Jazz Fellowship Awards and the Durham Emerging Artist Grant.
An excellent clinician, Paolantonio has served in schools and colleges in and out of state. He was a NC Artist in Residence for three years, and has taught jazz improvisation and history at North Carolina Central University, UNC Chapel Hill, Duke University, North Carolina State University, and Elon College. As an accompanist, Paolantonio’s recording credits include Baron Tymas’s CD “Insight at Midnight”; A Benny Goodman CD recorded for Elon College “Airmail Special”; Mike Waddell’s CD “Defining Moments”; a Benny Goodman and Duke Ellington CD recorded with the North Carolina Jazz Repertory Orchestra; Scott Sawyer’s CD, “In the Stream”; Group Sax’s three recordings “A New Level”, “All’s Well” and “Prime Time”; Karen Love’s CD “I Believe in Little Things”; and Dan Axelrod’s L.P. “New Axe” distributed on the Phoenix Record label.
Dedications, Paolantonio’s first CD, showcases his superb talent as a composer and arranger, and demonstrates his outstanding ability as a jazz improviser.
“Dad’s Blues” is Paolantonio’s second recording as a leader and is available through Ed’s web site:
(paoloproductions.com)
About the Series
Developing the Total Musician – Teaching Essential Skills: Improvisation, Accompanying, and Sight Reading
We value the commitment of piano teachers to serve our students with professionalism and teaching expertise. Committed to education, we proudly present this complimentary three-part lecture series. To ensure the health and safety of our clinicians and participants, this year’s programs will be available to attend in-person and via live stream.
Students who are available to participate due to flexible remote learning schedules are also welcome to attend! The live stream link will be available on our website at ruggeropiano.com prior to each presentation. These workshops are complimentary – we invite you to join us in-person or via Live Stream!
About This Presentation
Pianists can be completely self-sufficient as musicians. There is a wealth of repertoire for piano solo. But there is so much more music in which pianists share the score with musical partners! Join Allison Gagnon in a workshop that explores collaborative skills for young pianists and introduces sample repertoire to teach these skills. Also included will be a discussion of the opportunities for student pianists who are equipped to share the music, whether with individual vocal and instrumental partners, or with a vocal or instrumental ensemble. The second part of the workshop may feature some work with teams of student participants. There will be time for questions and conversation throughout.
About the Presenter
Canadian pianist Allison Gagnon directs the Collaborative Piano Program at University of North Carolina School of the Arts and concertizes with vocal and instrumental colleagues across the US and internationally. At UNCSA, she performs not only with faculty and students, but also with guest artists, including soprano Latonia Moore in the 2022-23 season. Before joining UNCSA in 1998 she was affiliated with two Canadian universities: Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario and McGill University in Montreal, Quebec. She was also a member of the piano staff at the Meadowmount School of Music in New York for almost 20 years.
A dedicated educator, Dr. Gagnon has twice received the UNCSA Excellence in Teaching Award (2014 and 2022). Graduates of the collaborative piano program she launched more than 20 years ago at UNCSA are active professionally across the US, in Canada and abroad. Her definitive edition of the piano reduction for Ernest Chausson’s Poème, Op. 25 for Violin and Orchestra has been published (www.encoremupub.com) and new reductions of two of Mozart’s instrumental concertos (K. 219 and K. 313) are in process, as are teaching materials in the field of collaborative piano pedagogy. Allison’s developing interest in the role of music in dementia care has led to a new dimension in her role as educator: since 2019 she has served as faculty mentor for the Music Between Us team of UNCSA’s ArtistCorps community engagement initiative, a project that provides interactive musicmaking in dementia care. In June 2022, the Music Between Us Program Guide was launched, available to all collegiate schools of music to inspire more such projects in communities beyond Winston-Salem.
Dr. Gagnon completed her DMA with Anne Epperson at the Cleveland Institute of Music. Her earlier teachers were Dale Bartlett (McGill), Michael Krist (Vienna Hochschule fur Musik), Pierre Jasmin, and Margaret McLellan (Queen’s) and her mother Marjorie Gagnon. From CIM she holds the Brooks Smith Award of its Collaborative Piano Department. Her creative interests include ceramics and wildlife photography. Since 2015 she has served on NCMTA’s Executive Board, currently as Vice President for Membership.
About the Series
Developing the Total Musician – Teaching Essential Skills: Improvisation, Accompanying, and Sight Reading
We value the commitment of piano teachers to serve our students with professionalism and teaching expertise. Committed to education, we proudly present this complimentary three-part lecture series. To ensure the health and safety of our clinicians and participants, this year’s programs will be available to attend in-person and via live stream.
Students who are available to participate due to flexible remote learning schedules are also welcome to attend! The live stream link will be available on our website at ruggeropiano.com prior to each presentation. These workshops are complimentary – we invite you to join us in-person or via Live Stream!
About This Presentation
In this presentation Dr. Lyman discusses some of the basic elements required for success in developing sight reading skills. The methods and materials presented and discussed may lead one to wonder whether success in sight reading really is magic, or whether it can be attained through rigorous application of proven principles
About the Presenter
Dr. Kent Lyman is a Steinway Artist, and has distinguished himself as a soloist and chamber musician throughout much of the United States, in South Korea, China, Italy, and Brazil. He has performed and/or lectured in many venues, including the Piccolo Spoleto Festival in Charleston, South Carolina, the National Conference of the Sonneck Society for American Music in Worcester, Massachusetts, and the Hawaii International Conference on Arts and Humanities in Honolulu, among many others. For the last several summers, he has worked as the principal rehearsal pianist for the International Young Artists Project, based in Monte San Savino, Italy. This program provides opportunities for young singers to study and perform Italian opera and art song in Italy, under the tutelage of native speakers. He has made a number of trips to South Korea where he has taught master classes and performed as a soloist at universities and schools throughout the country, including Seoul National University, Sejong University, and many others. In May of 2018, he was invited to give a keynote lecture on using technology in piano teaching at the National Conference of the Korean Piano Pedagogy Association. He delivered the lecture in Korean, which he speaks fluently. During a concert tour of Asia in the fall of 2007, he added China to his list of international venues, with concerts and master classes at conservatories of music in Shenyang and Guangzhou. He has toured Brazil, where he performed at the University of Campinas, and served as the opening concert artist and as a judge for the 22nd annual Paulo Giovanini National Piano Competition in Araçatuba, Brazil.
He has appeared with a number of orchestras, including the Charlotte Symphony Orchestra, the North Carolina Symphony, the Raleigh Civic Symphony, the Chamber Orchestra of the Triangle (Raleigh, NC), the Broward Symphony Orchestra (Ft. Lauderdale, Florida) and the Florence Symphony Orchestra (South Carolina). As one of twelve nationally selected finalists, he has performed at the Chicago Symphony’s Ravinia Festival in master classes with Menahem Pressler, Leon Fleisher, and Misha Dichter. He has toured the East coast with the Piedmont Trio in performances of a program commemorating the centenary of the death of Clara Schumann. Mr. Lyman has recorded for the Centaur label, and can be heard on a CD performing chamber works of the late American composer Virgil Thomson. There are also a number of professionally produced videos that are available to view on Youtube, including one of the only known recordings of Korean piano music by Bang-ja Hurh, her suite entitled Pieces of Arirang.
Kent Lyman is currently Professor of Music and Coordinator of Piano Studies at Meredith College in Raleigh, North Carolina. A native of Utah, he received his bachelor’s degree from the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, and master’s and doctoral degrees from Indiana University in Bloomington, where he studied with James Tocco.
