Calendar

Oct
21
Fri
4th Annual Fall Course Series, Part 1 of 3 – Teaching Improvisation from the Beginning featuring Ed Paolantonio, Jazz Artist, Adjunct Faculty at Duke University @ Ruggero Piano
Oct 21 @ 10:00 am – 12:00 pm
4th Annual Fall Course Series, Part 1 of 3 - Teaching Improvisation from the Beginning featuring Ed Paolantonio, Jazz Artist, Adjunct Faculty at Duke University @ Ruggero Piano

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)

Oct
28
Fri
4th Annual Fall Course Series, Part 2 of 3 – Playing Well with Others: An Introduction to Collaborative Skills for Pianists featuring Dr. Allison Gagnon, Director of Collaborative Piano, UNCSA @ Ruggero Piano
Oct 28 @ 10:00 am – 12:00 pm
4th Annual Fall Course Series, Part 2 of 3 - Playing Well with Others: An Introduction to Collaborative Skills for Pianists featuring Dr. Allison Gagnon, Director of Collaborative Piano, UNCSA @ Ruggero Piano

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.

Jan
13
Fri
4th Annual Fall Course Series, Part 3 of 3 – The Magical Methodology of Sight Reading featuring Dr. Kent Lyman, Professor of Piano, Meredith College @ Ruggero Piano
Jan 13 @ 10:00 am – 12:00 pm
4th Annual Fall Course Series, Part 3 of 3 - The Magical Methodology of Sight Reading featuring Dr. Kent Lyman, Professor of Piano, Meredith College @ Ruggero Piano

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.

*Subject to credit approval. Monthly payments of $55.56 per $1,000 borrowed for 18 months at 0% APR. On purchases of new and in-stock qualifying Yamaha pianos from October 31, 2024 to January 6, 2025.

*Subject to credit approval. Monthly payments of $55.56 per $1,000 borrowed for 18 months at 0% APR. On purchases of new and in-stock qualifying Yamaha pianos from October 31, 2024 to January 6, 2025.

Customer Reviews

I was in the market for a small digital piano (townhome, limited space). After some initial research online, I realized Ruggero had an impressive collection of digital pianos in stock, so I popped over to check them out. I tried out a handful, and was delighted to find the one I wanted was actually $100 cheaper than Amazon. I bought it on the spot. It's great to support local business who throw in a bunch stuff and services, are not pushy at all, not to mention extremely knowledgeable. I bought the cheapest model and was in and out in 30 minutes. - Nancy Jin

Contact Us Here

Scroll to Top