Fyrewurks

Since I plan on documenting my piano practice every day, I’ve decided it would just become too big and swallow this blog whole if I posted on it here, so I’ve moved it over here at Piano-Project.com. I also spent much of tonight looking for a design for it, but ended up liking my current [...]

I wasn’t very descriptive about the Chopin piece that I mentioned attempting yesterday, but it’s the “Prelude op. 28 No. 24 in D minor.” I’ve always been a fan of Chopin, but didn’t hear this piece until I saw it in the Vietnamese movie “The Scent of Green Papaya,” which was played during a thunderstorm [...]

Today I started a new project:  devoting an hour a day to the piano in the hopes that one year from now I will have honed my rusty piano playing skills.  I’ve been playing since I was about twelve years old, had an amazing teacher in my late twenties (Julliard graduate, trained with Glenn Gould, [...]

Since I have so much to be thankful for, and since it is Thanksgiving, I wanted to do a stream-of-consciousness post on 101 things I’m thankful for.  I thought about ordering them at first, but that just didn’t seem right somehow. 1. Natasha, Natasha, Natasha, Natasha, Natasha; my sweetest of sweets daughter.  I’ve been ‘in [...]

If you’re getting back into piano after a ten-year break, don’t try to jump back in with Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody #2.  (No matter how much you really really want to play it). No one plays this like Horowitz.

Back when I was going to college, there was this bizarre guy there – didn’t fit into any social niche whatsoever (which is typically appealing) – in fact, the best words I can think of to describe him are “disheveled” and perhaps “disquieting.”  Anyway, once a friend of mine told me that he was in [...]

…practice, practice, practice! The old joke couldn’t be more true, though.  Since I started taking piano lessons again last Thursday, I’ve realized that as much as I love to play, despite that love I can still fall into the pitfalls that only self-discipline can cure. I hear all these beautiful songs and I want to [...]

It’s been nine years since I really played piano; I stopped taking lessons and took a break when I was pregnant with my daughter and now that she’s older and I have some extra time (especially if I get up at four in the morning), I’m going to start playing again – and I am [...]

The Van Cliburn Foundation recently introduced a YouTube Competition for Amateurs in which the winner will win an automatic entry into the sixth International Piano Competition for Outstanding Amateurs in 2011. You see, I have a keen interest in the competition because I have a fantasy of entering it.  And that’s why it was unsettling when I realized that [...]