Studio Closed.
We are following the public school holiday schedule on this day.

Pictured: One of the first cave-dwelling paintings “Cueva de las Manos” discovered, in Santa Cruz Argentina.

This group event is for those students who completed their summer Snake and Ladder game project! Choose a piece, old or new, to play for the group. Then we will head to the family room to play a couple rounds of Music Bingo and pizza. Prizes will be awarded to those who correctly call BINGO. One prize per student. Shhhh…..the prizes will remain secrets until the the winners of each card is announced. For students only.

This is a drop in event: once your student has practiced on the piano at St. Paul’s church, they are welcome to leave. This is a mandatory rehearsal for anyone participating in the showcase recital on Saturday, June 13th.

The Studio is closed for this National Holiday. Enjoy the first barbecue of the season, keep up your practice to get ready for our end-of-year recital, and play ball!

Our Adult pianists will join together to play duets, trios and solo pieces at the lovely riverside home of Ralph Johnson and Carol Yunker! Everyone, please bring a potluck dish to share so that we may enjoy dinner together after the recital with views overlooking the Parker River.

Our studio is invited to share a Fun Friday music and sing-along with youth and adult new English Language learners at a gathering space at the headquarters of the International Institute of New England, Lowell branch. Once a month, new refugees and legal immigrants gather with ESOL (English as a Second Language) counselors to further their English language learning through group singing and music-making. They have a very talented keyboardist from Haiti who accompanies this group's singing. Our students have worked all year to learn how to accompany group sings! Come help make this a truly welcoming event for our students and Lowell, MA's newest residents! This event is sponsored by a generous community impact grant from the Francis Clark Center of Keyboard Pedagogy.

As we continue to work with our Immigrant Community to use music to help students of other languages learn English, it is important that we experience what it is like to not know anything of another language and have to start learning from scratch. Come for an introduction in how to read music using the Braille raised dot notation system so that we can experience not knowing anything about playing this music but work step by step to play your first song with raised notation. Our workshop leader Marcela Bestida comes to us from the center of Assistive Music Technology Lab at Boston University!

This year we are celebrating Three Kings Day in recital! This is traditionally the Epiphany or when the three Magi welcomed the baby Jesus with gifts. It is also a time of year that during the Medieval period Insolent masked balls were popular. This is when people switched roles between Kings and Queens with the peasant class. Our recital, combining traditional holiday carols with pieces about literacy…such as Felix le Couppey’s The Alphabet, will conclude with the cutting of The Three King’s cake…to see who gets the hidden coin!

This is another accompanying activity this year to hone our skills accompanying groups of people singing! Students will play familiar carols; we will move from piano student house to piano student house in rotating small groups until the end when we will all gather for cookies and hot chocolate. A studio favorite, we have not programmed this kind of event since before Covid. It’s great to bring this popular activity back!

Come and celebrate learning how to play 'Happy Birthday' by memory, so you are ready anytime someone in your family or one of your friends has a party! We will also play the human spinner game and eat birthday cake :) This event is exclusively for piano students. Parents come 15 minutes early and join us for coffee and a slice of cake!

Your Teacher will be presenting an online lecture for the Francis Clark Center Piano Inspires!

Studio Closed.
We are following the public school holiday schedule on this day.

Pictured: One of the first cave-dwelling paintings “Cueva de las Manos” discovered, in Santa Cruz Argentina.

Welcome back! This is the day we start piano lessons for the 2024-2025 piano year! Our theme for this year continues Bridges and Borders: celebrating our culturally diverse communities with music. Join us this year as we continue to work at the cutting edge of music for young students, shaping our world one key at a time. One project will be learning music from method books written in another language!

What a great year we would have had! Congratulations to all. Come visit me for a summer lesson and an ice-cream treat!

Our end-of-year showcase recital will feature the work our students have learned in collaboration with the Institute for Immigration of New England. After months of learning about families who have newly arrived in Massachusetts, helping them to learn English as a Second Language by singing and our students accompanying on the piano, raise money to help with finding safe places to live, taking salsa dance lessons, and learning original music from the 23 countries that comprise North America, our students are excited to perform. Music will come from Canada, the United States, Mexico, as well as various Caribbean island nations like Antigua and Barbuda, Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Costa Rica, Cuba, Dominica, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Grenada, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Jamaica, Nicaragua, Panama, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, and Trinidad and Tobago; with major regions often including the Eastern, Central, and Western parts of the continent, alongside the Caribbean islands. 

This is a drop-in event: Please try to come to our recital space and practice on the piano. Students do not have to stay for the whole time. But you will be more comfortable performing on Sunday if you take the time to practice at the church beforehand!

Students come and preview your pieces for the Bridges and Borders end of year Showcase recital! At the same time, we are meeting with our wonderful piano technician Michael Blanchard! Michael will take the piano apart and show us how the pedals work, how the hammers activate the strings and what might we do with our fingers in order to get a very reactive sound…from soft to big! And then try out the grand piano as you rethink how to play your end of year recital piece representing our theme Bridges and Borders: The Immigrant Experience throughout North America.

Our studio is invited to share a Fun Friday music and sing-a-long with youth and adult new English Language learners at a gathering space at the headquarters of the International Institute of New England, Lowell branch. Once a month, new refugees and legal immigrants gather with ESOL counselors (English as a Second Language) to further their learning of English through group singing and music making! They have a very talented keyboardist from Haiti who comes to accompany this group sing. Our students are invited to play and to join in the singing fun. Come help make this a truly welcoming event for Lowell, MA's newest residents!

Our Adult pianists will join together to play duets, trios and solo pieces at the lovely riverside home of Ralph Johnson and Carol Yunker! Everyone, please bring a potluck dish to share so that we may enjoy dinner together after the recital with views overlooking the Parker River.

The first time back since COVID! Students will be dropped off at the studio and use an hour to share their most recent piano music with fellow members of the studio. Then, we will all move to the back of the house to share some pizza and camaraderie. Sign up sheets are in the studio. Space limits us to 10 students…so don’t wait to long to sign up!

Come meet our fundraising partner, the International Institute of New England for a tour of their facilities and sit in on a class teaching English to families who came to Massachusetts from all over the world, to seek a better life. We will play games, sing some songs and witness the generosity and grateful spirit that these newest MA legal residents bring to the classroom.