Outreach Activities

The 21st Century Pianist: Enhancing the Performance Repertoire

This specialized seminar is geared to performing pianists interested in expanding their contemporary repertoire, exploring a vast range of styles and approaches.  During the course of the residency (depending on length of residency - to be determined), it is advantageous to have several sessions with the group of participating pianists, since it will be approached as a workshop/master class.  Each student should prepare a selected group of works in advance (to be discussed with the individual student prior to the residency). The works should be quite different from one another, showing a variety of technical and stylistic approaches in the contemporary repertoire. Students are allowed to bring one or two of the works to the seminar that may be only partially prepared which will be followed by explorations into the technical and performance practice aspects.  Open discussion will be encouraged.  In addition, private coaching will also be offered to each student during the course of the residency.

Through this program each student is encouraged to enhance his/her repertoire with a wide variety of styles and many of the following approaches will be covered collectively as a group:   European, American and Latin legacies, the pioneering approaches of jazz, prepared piano techniques, multimedia piano works, minimalism, postmodernism and the most recent approaches which include theatrically based works for singing and speaking pianist. Discussion of the development of performance possibilities, as well as exploring the demands of reinventing the concert experience for new audiences in today's society will be emphasized. In addition, exploring strategies in the world of piano competitions and unique strengths as individual performers will be discussed.

This workshop can be offered as two 3-hour workshop sessions, which would not only include selected content from this original description, but also limit each student to preparing only 1-2 pieces to present.

The workshop will be open to student composers as well so they can observe the different approaches to piano writing during the sessions and ask questions of their own.