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Questions we received from students or parents about piano tuition - Part III

Juan José Rezzuto

May 22, 2019
3 min

Questions we received from students or parents about piano tuition - Part III

In this chapter, we aim to answer the following common question: What shall we do after my Grading exam? As piano teachers, how many times did we get that questions from students or parents after a grading exam? I have different ways to approach that question. It really depends on the feedback that the student in question received during his last exam and the goal is to take three or four months working on his weaknesses. Most of the times, the problems are in the sight readi

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Questions we received from students or parents about piano tuition - Part II

Juan José Rezzuto

May 4, 2019
3 min

Questions we received from students or parents about piano tuition - Part II

I decided to continue with this series about interesting and common questions I receive from parents and students. It would be interesting to hear comments from my piano teachers’ friends. One very common question from my students is regarding fingering: “Why do I need to follow certain fingering when I can play the same passage with a different one or the one that comes in the very moment?” The answer is yes, you have to follow a certain fingering and especially at the begin

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Muzio Clementi

Juan José Rezzuto

Apr 22, 2019
3 min

Muzio Clementi

Muzio Clementi, Italian pianist and composer who based most of his life in London. The relationship between London, as one of the most cosmopolitan cities in the world, and the artistic and musical life is really strengthening and productive. Along the centuries several great artists and musicians, in particular, has been developing their own careers as composers, performers, publishers, conductors or teachers in London. One of the few personalities that come together all the

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Tonal Families: Introduction to Chord Substitution - Function 1

Mar 17, 2019
2 min

Tonal Families: Introduction to Chord Substitution - Function 1

Example C Major scale in piano chords Within a scale, we have seven diatonic chords. With the term diatonic I mean chords that belong to a specific scale. By looking at the triads we build on top of every note (or degree when referring to a harmonic function) it is possible to group the chords into families – or harmonic functions, if you prefer – that share similar harmonic properties. As each note has a specific function within a scale, the chord above it does as well. This

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A first approach to Jazz piano language

Juan José Rezzuto

Mar 10, 2019
3 min

A first approach to Jazz piano language

As a classically-trained pianist, my first approach to jazz made me realize how many differences exists within the instrumental techniques according to the genre you want to play. Studying jazz was a distant experience in contrast with anything learned so far. It’s a musical world with an enormous variety: it covers from the Dixieland to Bebop, going through Ragtime and Fusion. Jazz identity is not easy to delimit, being this term associated more with a musical language. All

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Classical Music in Russia

Juan José Rezzuto

Mar 5, 2019
2 min

Classical Music in Russia

Russian classical music One of the fastest developing places of Western music was in Russia during the 19th Century. Previously it wasn’t allowed due to the Orthodox Church dissuading Secular music. By the time Peter I had reigned, Western composers and musicians had been frequently invited to the new westernised city of Saint Petersburg to spread the influence of music- most popularly Italian Opera across the aristocracy at the time. The problem with this was although they w

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Questions we received from students or parents about piano tuition.

Juan José Rezzuto

Feb 27, 2019
2 min

Questions we received from students or parents about piano tuition.

Surely, we all experienced some “fun” questions about our profession from clients/students who are new to our world. In these series of articles I wanted to share some of them that I came across during my teaching experience. A couple of years ago, I received a phone call from a parent who was enquiring about piano lessons for his two boys preparing respectively for Grade 6-7 and theory. “Could you please teach my two boys music theory and Grade 6-7 for half an hour each? The

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The Renaissance, Music at the service of the Word

Avelino Vazquez

Feb 16, 2019
2 min

The Renaissance, Music at the service of the Word

The fall of Constantinople in 1453 was a blow to Western civilization, its stability was now threatened by the unstoppable thrust of the Turkish Empire, capable of even besieging Vienna itself on two occasions and several decades later. As is known, the Ottomans would seize a considerable part of Eastern Europe, the entire continent trembled. Although, fortunately, not all were misfortunes. The rediscovery of texts of classical antiquity that had been brewing slowly since the

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Musical expectations and Cultural attributes in Music

Feb 6, 2019
3 min

Musical expectations and Cultural attributes in Music

What is it determines what we like? Which template of musical determines our musical taste? This can be related to musical expectations. This is basically how do we perceive any given musical template, these expectations are what we believe or think the way music has to go. One root of this situation can be attributed to how we were musically nurtured since we are born. By musical nurture, I simply mean in what culture did we grow up and what kind of music did we listen by ou

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Developments in Music

Juan José Rezzuto

Feb 3, 2019
2 min

Developments in Music

Over the past weeks I have been rehearsing some new (or very old) music with colleagues. Most recently a sonata by Sammartini written in the 17th century. Avelino who is a real expert experienced with early music had found it and we started to work on it for an upcoming concert. The music is very nice with harmonies I only thought existed in the Romantic period and after but there was a real expressive use of chords and suspensions with 7ths, 9ths. The kind of chords you woul

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The Music of the Future, by Robert Barry (Book Review)

Juan José Rezzuto

Jan 26, 2019
3 min

The Music of the Future, by Robert Barry (Book Review)

The Music of the Future is a book in three acts, structured as a sort of tabloid opera. The book challenges the basic narrative of modernity from the conservatism of the classical age to “the elitism of the techno purist”. By examining an unusual collection of efforts to contemporize music alongside current concerns of music’s progress, Robert Barry collates what he calls “a history of failures, mapping 200 years of attempts… to imagine a future of music”. It’s a fun read, an

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Tips for Practising and Sight Reading

Juan José Rezzuto

Jan 6, 2019
3 min

Tips for Practising and Sight Reading

Reading a piano sheet music On a previous article, I briefed about the main differences between the two ways of playing music whether known or completely unfamiliar. I have had many students whether trying out new music or preparing for exams completely stuck on sight reading so we went through many practice runs until it became routine. We can get completely thrown by the fact we have very limited time to sight read (mainly half a minute) as opposed to learning a new piece o

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Pablo de Sarasate

Juan José Rezzuto

Dec 27, 2018
2 min

Pablo de Sarasate

One particular composer for the violin I recommend to listen to is violin composer Pablo de Sarasate. Born in Pamplona, North Spain in the Navarra province. Sarasate brought Spanish style music to the forefront of the Classical repertoire which served as inspiration for a lot of following composers. Saint Saens Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso, Lalo Symphonie Espagnole, Bizet Carmen which filtered through to later composers including Ravel. Born in a city famous for the San

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Community Music

Juan José Rezzuto

Dec 19, 2018
4 min

Community Music

England has been a pivotal figure in the progress of community music. Broadly speaking, Community Music developed from the 1960s and had a burgeoning period in the 1980s. Today we have an established set of practices, a repertoire, an infrastructure of organizations, qualifications, career paths and various cultural and pedagogic innovations as a result. Still, the practice of community music is only partly articulated and historicized in research. Although new publications,

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Juan José Rezzuto

Nov 4, 2018
3 min

WKMT Piano Festival: The Challenge of Performing live

In everyday life, your sense of nervousness is somehow contained. However, in an unusual situation such as a piano performance or any other instrument, there is a super saturation of factors that cause nervousness: the pressure of playing flawlessly, lack of time to practise the piece before and most importantly, the live audience that will be in the Concert Hall. Before the live performance, there are natural barriers that can control nervousness, such as a flow of adrenalin

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Rotation Movement - Scaramuzza Piano Technique

Juan José Rezzuto

Oct 24, 2018
2 min

Rotation Movement - Scaramuzza Piano Technique

Introduction This article is much better understood after attending the masterclass dictated by Juan Rezzuto at WKMT. In other words, this article is meant to be used complemented Juan Rezzuto's masterclass on “rotation” movement. Definition The “rotation movement” is one of the most complex movements in the Scaramuzza technique. It involves the supinator and pronator muscles, the forearm, the palm, and the fingers primordially. The idea behind the application of this movemen

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Wrist Movement

Juan José Rezzuto

Oct 16, 2018
3 min

Wrist Movement

Anatomy We will give a name to a movement based on the part of our body that moves and becomes responsible for actioning the keys. In the case of the wrist movement, in particular, this clarification becomes fundamental to understand how to produce this movement. Even though the wrist movement is “seen” to be happening at a “wrist level,” the muscles responsible for moving the wrist are not located on the wrist. The muscle which is eminently in charge of the activation of t

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Stravinsky and His viewpoint on the Concept of Art - Part III

Juan José Rezzuto

Oct 3, 2018
3 min

Stravinsky and His viewpoint on the Concept of Art - Part III

Igor Stravinsky, Russian-born composer, pianist and conductor, was one of the most influential composers of the XX Century, also known as “the father of contemporary music” thanks to the originality in the rhythmic design of his ballets, especially “the Rite of Spring”. The vision he had about art and composition was as unique as his music. In his thoughts, we can clearly appreciate the depth of his artistic approach. Stravinsky stands his view in three main pillars: Dogma, R

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Rehearsing Haydn Piano Concerto in D Major

Juan José Rezzuto

Oct 1, 2018
2 min

Rehearsing Haydn Piano Concerto in D Major

I’m writing this article after the second rehearsal for the Haydn Concert planned to happen on the 13th of October 2018 at the fabulous St. Cuthbert’s Philbeach Gardens, Earls Court, London, UK, (5:00pm). Maestro Sisti showed a great deal of professionalism managing to conduct without counting with the full score! We have been trying to find the full-score of this very obscure piece by J. Haydn. Aiding to our frustration, we found out none of the major publishers, Boosey and

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French Lutenists' Influence in Harpsichord Music

Avelino Vazquez

Sep 17, 2018
3 min

French Lutenists' Influence in Harpsichord Music

During the Renaissance and at the beginning of the Baroque age, the harpsichord literature hardly differed from that of the organ, the style of writing came, like all the instrumental music of that period (especially in Renaissance age), from vocal music, in reality, it was started as mere transcription of it. His writing in four voices was respected by Sweelinck in Holland or Cabezón in Spain. We know that Sweelinck never travelled outside Holland but almost all English comp

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