http://www.pbs.org/parents/creativity/np_lessons.html

BTW, if anyone knows how to actually put the link to the page (other than the url underlined) I'd LOVE to know how - help?

http://www.thestar.com/news/insight/article/1066822--birds-humans-share-musical-habits-researchers-find

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/your-musical-self/201107/does-singing-your-baby-really-work

Does singing to your baby really work?

Art class or music class?



http://www.miller-mccune.com/education/music-training-enhances-childrens-verbal-intelligence-36701/

We did not change as we grew older; we just became more clearly ouselves.”

― Lynn Hall Love this quote!

Happy First Day of Autumn! (no matter how rainy or cold!)

OK, that last part was for ME, since it's easy for me to get blue without sunny and warm weather. OK, at least sunny. I seem to need more and more Vit D every year I get older.

MYC classes and lessons are going well, as we all learn the routine, or re-learn it. Web site is working, and schedule intact. The pianos were tuned yesterday, and sound great! Replaced the old amp for the black Yamaha keyboard with one specifically made for keyboards (not guitars or bass) and IT sounds great too! Wedding in 2 weeks, plans in the works for the rehearsal dinner I'm "catering". Things are good.

I ran across this poem this morning:

Heather's song

This is a special love song

For all the young people in the world,

Here's hoping someone kind

Watches over each and every one,

Because in every young face,

No matter how angry or sad,

Lies the blossom of a pure heart,

Not evil wrong or bad.

So if you have a young child,

Be gentle wise and kind,

And treat them like an orchid,

So rare and hard to find,

Your love will be like water

To all the seeds you sow.

For they are the fairest flowers

In life's garden where they grow.

And if you know the old folks,

Be gentle wise and kind,

Their souls will soon depart us,

And leave this world behind,

They've given us the future,

They taught us what they know,

To soon become a part of

God's kingdom where they go.

This is a special love song

For all the people in the world.

Rory Block

No classes the week of 9/5 - 9/9......last gasp of summer vacation trip for us. Resume 9/12/11.

See you then!

Countdown to classes and lessons! 4 days to go! I think I'm ALMOST ready! Time to give the studio a good scrubbing...cleaned out the drawers and cupboards, have to wash windows yet, entryway, set-up keyboards for the class year, (not summer mode) double-check materials, etc etc, etc! I'm getting excited! Hope you are too!

August 10, 2011

Happy summer's-end....or at least what feels like it. It's been a HOT one here in north-eastern Ohio and many places in the United States generally, so many will welcome cooler weather with open arms. Might be jeans weather soon!

I have been enjoying being a lady of leisure, and once again, didn't accomplish even HALF of what I thought I wanted, but I feel rested, got some exercise and read some wonderful books, and some really dumb ones too. The addition of a Kindle to my life has made reading a whole different experience. (Many thanks to Bob and Suzy for that terrific gift!)

2011 was a year of momentous occasions, with both my parents turning 70, and celebrating their 50th aniversary. My hubby Paul is turning 60, and shortly after the turn of 2012 I will have one that ends in 0 as well. Since I've been saying that I'm thirty-nineteen, you can do the math yourself. Jordan was the last birdie to leave the nest, in preparation for his wedding in October, and literally the day after he moved, we were interviewed for an article about empty nesters that appeared in Ohio Magazine! Good thing we already had 6 mos alone a few years ago, and his schedule was such that sometimes days went by without us seeing him at all. Well, we assume it was him....SOMEONE was living in our basement, since we saw signs of him in the bathroom, etc. For all intents and purposes, we had an empty nest for quite a while. (more on that another time - and the link to the article is http://ohiomagazine.com/Main/Articles/4441.aspx)

Scheduling is going fairly well, although I am having trouble getting in touch with some students to find a slot for them. If you ARE one of the above-mentioned, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE call or email me ASAP, or else you may not get a spot you like. Anyone new who is reading this and thinking about enrolling your child in Music For Young Children classes with me, please contact me. If this is foreign to you, check out www.myc.com/teacher/LScheutzow for more information.

So, enjoy the rest of your accelerating summer. VIVACE!

Musically yours,

Lori

Scheduling fall lessons and classes now! Call or email to reserve your spot!

More to come -

Summer 2011

I guess it's time to get this blog going again! It's been neglected for such a long time. I don't know if anyone reads it, but on the off-chance they do, I'll begin again. I have recovered from the LONG spring illness although, even 6 weeks later, still can relapse if I'm not careful and don't rest in between the activities that summer brings.

Summer lessons will begin again next week, June 29 on Wednesdays. Call or email me to schedule a time. Time slots are going fast. I have skype and for some more advanced students, can do a lesson via webcam if necessary. It's not optimum, but better than nothing! Often it helps keep motivation for practicing up if we can check in via skype once in a while if you can't get here.

I will have one week in July and at least one in August that I'll be gone. Fall classes will begin Sept 12.

Hope to see you all soon!

Musically yours,

Lori

IN CASE ANYONE CHECKS HERE: ALL CLASSES AND LESSONS CANCELLED TODAY
FEB 2, 2011

SNOW DAY!

PLEASE CONTINUE WORKING ON COMPOSITIONS - THEY'LL BE DUE IN 3 WEEKS!

December 28,2010

It has REALLY been a long time since I posted, but I will make one of my New Year's resolutions to keep more current...... for MYC students' benefit, here are the guidelines for the compostion festival, which must arrive in Canada by March 4, 2011

FYI: we will resume lessons and classes Jan 3, 2011. See you then! Happy New Year!

MYC Composition Festival Guidelines

* all compositions must have a TITLE

* computer generated compositions must have original in child’s hand-writing attached

* child must print their own name on composition

* each composition must have teacher’s name, province/state, and MYC level

SUNSHINE 1

minimum four measures, one hand or could be divided between the hands

may be on the staff, may be critters

may be shapes to indicate direction

must include pitch (indicate direction of pitch – up or down?) and rhythm

no bridges

must indicate dynamics

SUNSHINE 2 AND SUNBEAMS 1

minimum four measures, one hand leading to the other or melody with bridges

must be written on the staff

indicate tempo, i.e., fast/slow and dynamics

SUNBEAMS 2 AND MOONBEAMS 1

minimum four measures, hands together (use no more than one great big whole rest)

to be written with chord or single notes in each clef

must be written on the staff

indicate tempo, dynamics

SUNBEAMS 3, MOONBEAMS 2 AND ADULT 1

minimum eight measures, hands together

to be written with chord, single notes or chord symbols

must indicate phrasing, tempo and dynamics

MOONBEAMS 3 AND ADULT 2

minimum eight measures, hands together

to be written with single notes, chord or chord symbols

must indicate phrasing, tempo and dynamics

July 28, 2010

Josh and Laura have some friends, well, a LOT of friends, and one is a photographer, who recently had a sweet little baby of his own. I would say that he is getting lots of practice shooting baby shots, as you can see here. Apparently, Merit is as photogenic as his folks, since this was just in their living room on the couch! Still, it seems he had enough and decided to let them know ........eventually. Thanks, Peter. (pics by Peter Dewitt photography

July 8, 2010

This is what I've been doing with my time, or at least some of it. Staring in the face of my first beautiful grandchild, Merit, who is the new love of my life. That and trying to rest and regroup for the upcoming school year. I have been teaching a few students, and that has been nice to keep up with them and see them progress while their school is not in session, which means they really WANT to be here. Not what I can always say about everyone who comes all year long.

So, that's about it for now. Have another event this weekend.....HS reunion. Won't say which one...HA!

More later....

Lori

Yamaha has recalled 20,000 pianos due to a problem with the pedal sticking, causing pianists to play faster than they normally would, resulting in a dangerous number of accidentals. The sticky pedal also makes it harder for pianists to come to a full stop at the end of a piece making it extremely risky for audiences. Although there have been a tremendous number of accidentals, fortunately it has so far caused no deafs. Analysts are wondering if it will put a damper on their bass market and if they will be able to sustain sales. Congress is also considering calling in the president of Yamaha for questioning as to when the company first learned about the treble.

Here's an update on that Yamaha piano recall: Congressional inquiries brought a sharp response from president Mitsuru Umemura of Yamaha, who quickly played down the scale of the problem before taking the fifth. "Only a few modal years are affected by what is a relative minor problem," he replied tiercely. With no progression toward a resolution, sales of Yamaha pianos have gone flat, and market analysts predict an interval of diminished revenue for the company. The president announced that Yamaha would triadvertising more and fine tune their marketing strategies in order to augment sales.

Further comments include: Finding that the key to recovery is selling pianos with no strings attached. The president may sound board with this response, but feels he'll reach a new bench-mark and put a lid on the rest. The chairman came up with a new tone, "The future sounds grand," in an upright interview with Music Today reporter, "but is in no way black and white."

Today is the day! Recital day, that is. Private recital at 1 pm and MYC recital at 4.
Location: All Saints Lutheran Church, 7230 Columbia Rd, Olmsted Twp, 44138. Should be a good time, and about an hour for each program. Short reception to follow.

Hope you can make it!

On the subject of applause in between movements in a concert:

Concertgoers, Please Clap, Talk or Shout at Any Time

Brown Brothers

Liszt, at left, would not have expected an audience to hold applause until the end of the piece.

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By BERNARD HOLLAND

Published: January 8, 2008

Concertgoers like you and me have become part police officer, part public offender. We prosecute the shuffled foot or rattled program, the errant whisper or misplaced cough. We tense at the end of a movement, fearful that one of the unwashed will begin to clap, bringing shame on us all. How serious we look, and how absurd we are.

Skip to next paragraph

Sam Falk/The New York Times

When Chopin played his E minor Piano Concerto in Warsaw in 1830, other pieces were inserted between the first two movements.

“Silence is not what we artists want,” Kenneth Hamilton quotes Beethoven in “After the Golden Age,” a detailed reflection on concert behavior in the 19th and early 20th centuries published recently by Oxford University Press. “We want applause.”

George Bernard Shaw, wearing his music critic’s hat, wrote that the silence at a London performance of Liszt’s “Dante” Symphony represented not rapt attention but audience distaste. Liszt, Anton Rubinstein and virtuosos like them would have been offended had listeners not clapped between movements, although in Beethoven’s case the point is moot, given that hardly anybody played more than one movement of a Beethoven sonata at a time.

I owe this information, along with most of the anecdotes that follow, to Mr. Hamilton’s delightful book, which you should read. People, he writes, also clapped while the music was going on. When Chopin played his Variations on “Là ci darem la mano” with orchestra, the audience bestowed its showstopping approval after every variation. As late as 1920, a Berlin audience was applauding Ferruccio Busoni in the middle of “La Campanella.”

Liszt, the composer of that piece, was observed in dignified old age, yelling bravos from the audience as Anton Rubinstein played Mozart’s A minor Rondo. Hans von Bülow boasted to his students that his performance in the first-movement cadenza of Beethoven’s “Emperor” Concerto regularly brought down the house, no matter that the movement wasn’t over.

In condemning modern recitals as canned, without spontaneity, literal and deadened by solemnity, Mr. Hamilton sometimes overstates the case. In the best of circumstances silence during a good performance becomes something palpable, not just an absence of noise. Involved audiences can shout approval without making a sound.

In describing the hypocrisies of “golden age” pursuers and other nostalgia freaks, on the other hand, he has a point. If music is to go back to original instruments and original performance practices, it has to acknowledge original audiences too.

Elias Canetti’s 1960 book “Crowds and Power” offers the best metaphor for modern concerts: the Roman Catholic Mass. Worshipers accept instructions from an executive operating from a raised platform at the front. They speak when spoken to and otherwise shut up. Mr. Hamilton attributes a lot of this recently acquired holiness to the recording age, but I think it has more to do with Germanic art’s taking itself deadly seriously. Every Mozart sonata is like Wagner’s “Parsifal,” and listeners should get down on their knees.

Audience participation was taken for granted in the 1840s. The pianist Alexander Dreyschock was criticized for playing “so loud that it made it difficult for the ladies to talk,” Mr. Hamilton writes. Today’s listeners, still eager to make themselves known, have been reduced to subversive acts in a fascistic society. When they are not interested, they cough. Operagoers long to be the first to be heard as the curtain falls. Anticipating the final cadences in Donizetti doesn’t make much difference. In “Parsifal” it is a disaster, and a frequent one.

Concerts were different back then. Liszt could get away with the radical idea of “one man, one recital,” but musical events were usually variety shows in the manner of vaudeville. The star pianist or violinist was just an occasionally recurring act in a parade of singers, orchestra players, quartets and trios. When Liszt did his solo acts, there was none of the march-on, march-off stage ritual of today. Liszt greeted patrons at the door, mingled in the audience and schmoozed with friend and stranger alike.

Whole recitals also took place between acts of an opera or movements of a symphony. When Chopin played his E minor Piano Concerto in Warsaw in 1830, other pieces were inserted between the first two movements. Perhaps the most celebrated such interruption was at the 1806 premiere of Beethoven’s Violin Concerto in Vienna, where the soloist thrilled listeners by playing his violin upside down and on one string.

Memorization was evidently as much prized in the 1800s as it is now, though people like Chopin and Beethoven thought that playing with scores increased accountability. Virtuosos like Anton Rubinstein learned by heart but frequently forgot what they had memorized. I once heard Arthur Rubinstein become lost in Ravel’s “Valses Nobles et Sentimentales,” simply diddling idly on the piano for a while before remembering what came next.

No one seemed to mind mistakes. If Liszt landed on a wrong note, he would treat it as a modulation, inventing a new passage on the spot. The idea of “Werktreue,” or honoring what the score says, was a weaker argument in the 19th century. Bülow told pupils that the occasionally planted clinker showed audiences how hard the piece at hand was.

My favorite music criticism is from a German on Brahms’s playing his own B flat Piano Concerto. “Brahms did not play the right notes,” he wrote, “but he played like a man who knew what the right notes were.”

There are still flickers of audience involvement in concerts, but so brainwashed are we by prevailing decorum that they make us nervous. Once in Havana I became troubled by two men in front of me talking excitedly during a performance of a Liszt piano concerto until I realized they were arguing the interpretation blow by blow.

Another time, late on a Spanish evening many years ago, I heard a village band competition at the bullring in Valencia. The playing was astonishing, and as a particular performance gradually took hold of the audience, low hums of approval would grow into something approaching wordless roars. It was the most profound concert experience of my life.