Playing for my students

I have a 2 tier "club" system for evaluating the expressiveness of my students' singing and admission to these "clubs" is hard to get. Club 2 is when the student in singing so expressively that they make me change the way I play (I become more expessive because of how they sing). Club 1 is when they give me goosebumps or make me cry.

Recent reading has made me remember that I also have the power as an accompanist to influence the expessivity of the singer. When I am only the accompanist, and don't have to be voice teacher as well, this is much easier to do. Sometimes when I am listening for technical issues my playing becomes more of just hitting the right notes in the right rhythms rather than creating music. My goal is to be more attentive to the possibilities of expression in the piano part from the very beginning of the student's learning process and thus encourage them to be expressive earlier.

In an article in the May 2010 Choral Journal, Tammy Miller discusses how an accompanist of a children's choir can aid the director in teaching expressivity. While playing parts to help the students learn the notes, an accompanist can model appropriate phrasing and articulation. I love this quote, "Quite simply, they will sing what I play the way I play it; they are easily influenced."

I've been reading Martin Katz's The Collaborative Pianist and have been pleasantly surprised to find that much of what he is telling the accompanists about building an interpretation is very similar to what I tell my singers. At first, my response was, "But isn't that the singer's choice to make?" But then I realized that he's right. If both the singer and the accompanist come to the rehearsal with interpretive ideas, it truly becomes more of a collaboration. The accompanist and singer can feed off the energy and emotions the other is bringing, creating a much more dynamic performance.

So now the question becomes, "How can I play differently in lesssons, from the first day of learning pitches, to help my students be more expressive?" I think I've already started to revise how my students learn a song. At the end of the last school year, I revised my Microwave Memorization method to involve not just learning notes and words quickly, but to include technique and interpretation from the very beginning. (To view the handout on this, click the Resources tab on my website www.jeanninerobinett.com)

My other goals are:
1. Always play melodies with expression (phrase shaping, dynamics, articulation, and meaning). They will sing it the way they hear it. If I bang, they will sound bad too.
2. Remember to ask them when we begin a new song what they think the song is about. We can further refine the interpretation in future lessons, but they need at least a general idea to get them started.
3. Practice committing to the interpretation AND listening for technical difficulties at the same time.

I started this post by explaining the 2 "clubs" to which my students aspire. Here are the 2 "clubs" that I'm working towards: Club 2--Inspire my students to be expressive by making every note that they hear me play expressive. Club 1--Give my students opportunities for goosebumps and crying as I demonstrate how beautiful those same old folk songs or Italian arias can be.




-- Posted from my iPhone