How Zentangle Can Influence Piano Playing

Last week we received this email from Ksenija Vojisavljevic, a classical piano teacher in Australia:

Dear Maria and Rick

Thank you for sharing this wonderful art method that you have created. It has been an enriching experience to get involved with Zentangle. It broadens the mind in many different ways.

I would like to share with you a little story that illustrates one fantastic moment that Zentangle can give a life to.
One piano student of mine is a little girl Vivien, 9 years old, disciplined and enthusiastic performer that plays intermediate level repertoire with a great technical skill and accuracy. What was missing in her performance, and what is not an unexpected moment with young child playing at that level, is the deepness of emotional involvement and richness of colours in a music interpretation.

To encourage the imagination of students I ask them to think what is music that they are playing telling them, and to present it in drawing and colouring. When I have got the illustration from my little student, it was a set of ten rectangles in mono colour. This actually was an adequate visual portray of her music performance. The same moment, without thinking twice, I advised her to go to tanglepatterns.com to find more ideas. I believe that enriching of the mind can always go in both directions between subjects. I expected that her effort in practicing patterns will improve her imagination and consequently inspire her music performance.

 

Surely, it did take place. I do not need to say anything more after showing you Viviens latest art work that she kindly allowed me to post. Her music performance automatically has improved as much. She would bring shapes and colours to the page of music representing the development of ideas and feelings along music lines. Once Vivien created those ideas in her mind they became alive in the performance as well. And this is all thanks to Zentangle.

Thank you Zentangle, Zentangle creators, and all Zentangle community.

All the best wishes and happy tangling!

Ksenija Vojisavljevic

Fabulous article about the value of music

http://mtprof.msun.edu/Fall2009/music.html

May 1, 2012

It's SPRING! When the world is puddle-wonderful and mudluscious, as eecummings says in his poem "in just spring". We are winding down the school year, practicing feverishly for the recital May 12. Well, I don't know how feverishly, but I am trying my best to motivate the students to be as prepared as possible. The goal is for each of them to have a positive experience performing, and while there will be inevitable mistakes, we're trying to make them few and easily overcome. Practice does NOT make perfect, right? PERFECT practice makes perfect, and that is an impossibility. We can only strive to do our best. Myself included. I'm planning on playing a composition this recital, and am realizing how long it's been since I have played in a performance setting. It gives me a good idea of what the students face every year. Yet another reason to keep it light and fun. How many adults remember terrifying performances as children, and how often those contributed to either not wanting to perform, or even quitting the instrument altogether?  I see the value however, in the end of the year recitals, as last year I was sick with pneumonia and lost the entire month of May, plus the 2 recitals. There was no closure, no show-casing their talents to friends and family; the year just sort of petered out.  

I have been on a course of antibiotics and other allergy-fighting medications, and the "bugs" just seem to come one after another. At any rate, May 12 will come, ready or not, and we will make it through somehow.  More details to follow in weeks ahead...hopefully some video links to youtube performances as well. 

Break a leg, folks, just not any fingers! 

L