"The interactive joining of minds in the partner groups greatly increases the speed of learning." "Before I encountered the Taubman approach, everything was about pushing and 'efforting.' Now it's about letting things flow and getting out of my own way. I've learned that I don't need to create an artifice of myself, that my self will do just fine." "I feel more interested in pursuing playing again than I have in a very long time." anonymous evaluations  After this particular lunch, we talked about how to write in a healthy way. During other meals, we had scheduled and unscheduled discussions about The Taubman Techniques videos, about mental attitude in practice and performance, and about our various journeys: "The feeling of community was also very special--there was nothing put on here, it was all so genuinely supportive and amicable." "Meeting and talking with and hearing people talk about the realities of their own journeys was very helpful to me." "The atmosphere was wonderful. The people were easy to get along with. The food was tasty. I could go on and on. I would highly recommend it to anyone who was interested." anonymous evaluations  Games are excellent teaching tools! Here, we are playing "patty-cake". |
WHAT MAKES THE BALANCED
PIANIST DIFFERENT? Many teachers and performers understand some piece of, or in some cases many pieces of, what the best practicing, performing, and teaching piano could be. I've had some fabulous teachers myself, in programs that nurtured me as a musician, and as a pianist. However, some recurring themes in the musical lives of many of my students drove me to create something new. Despite a wealth of teaching talent in our field, many students of music, professional and amateur, are more concerned with getting it "right" than with bringing music to life. As a result, they don't enjoy practicing, and they fear performance. Because they are trying to satisfy an external standard, they also don't pay attention to cues from their body, and therefore accept a degree of tension and incoordination that leads to injury. This is abetted by a lack of generally available information on the best ways to move, and, conversely, some truly unfortunate schools of playing based on violating our natural alignment and restraining our natural movements. I believe that all this injury, tension, fear, and drudgery results from an unhealthy emphasis on a synthetic type of perfection. Classical music is indeed a perfectionist field, all the more so since digital technology began providing us with recordings of note-perfect "performances." Jazz players, too, face very high technical standards, even though the exact notes are not prescribed. However, none of us can ever do more than our personal best. None of us ever performs live with anything but what we have at the moment. All serious musicians, even young students, understand that there is a high standard of performance in the field; teachers rarely need to reinforce it. Instead, what teachers need to do is to guide each student toward his or her own unique interpretation of the self: physically, mentally, and musically. We need to demand of our students honesty, precision, persistence, and a sense of humor. We need to educate ourselves so we pass on the very best information. When students work with honesty, persistence, good nature, and excellent information to develop their own technical and interpretive skills, the result is the flowering of that person's own unique musical and technical being, often with musical and technical achievements far beyond what either teacher or student thought possible for that individual. The Balanced Pianist programs strive to help each participant achieve his or her own potential by
In The Balanced Pianist programs, participants search for
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