Private piano lessons for children and adults.
Shelley Kurtz Piano Lessons,
East Hampton, NY
Enjoy the pictures of piano students from Springs, East Hampton, Amagansett, Sag Harbor, and Montauk, NY. Students learn solos, theory, duets, etc. Private lessons are given in Shelley Kurtz's home. In-person piano lessons are available.
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Practice Makes Perfect
Through fun and discipline, students will learn how to master the craft of playing the piano. Private piano lessons for children and adults are offered. At the start of lessons, the skill level of each student is assessed, and we'll create an individualized plan that's right for you.
Let the fun begin!
Shelley Kurtz is a dedicated piano teacher with more than two decades of teaching experience and a special passion for bringing fun to her students. She is known for her intense, lively teaching style, and bases her method on the unique abilities and tastes of her students. She is well-versed in classical, country, and popular music, and has a strong background in theory. She strives to keep her own playing current, under the direction of Yerin Kim, at SUNY at Stony Brook.
It may seem obvious, but parents can encourage and inspire a child to practice [the piano] by providing a good instrument and an attractive space and atmosphere in which to practice. In physical terms this is likely to mean providing appropriate chairs, stands, a metronome, and good lighting. Even more important, perhaps, it means respecting your child's practice time.
---from
The Inner Game of Music, by Barry Green
It should be noted that piano practice is a physical and a mental activity; brains and brawn are equally important. Hours of mechanical finger gymnastics are a waste of time unless the mind is involved. Schumann expressed this admirably: "...there are many persons who imagine all will be accomplished if they keep on spending many hours each day in mere mechanical practice. It is about as if one should busy himself daily with repeating the ABC as fast as possible and always faster and faster. Use your time better." Exactly! Do not start your work without knowing not only what should be practiced, but also why it should be practiced, and how the technical and musical problems should be solved. It is not the amount of time spent at the keyboard tht counts, but rather the length of undivided attention.~~~taken from Teaching Piano, volume I, by Denes Agay
One day, Fanny Bloomfield – Zeisler was observed practicing scales on her piano, outdoors on the sidewalk. Everything in her Chicago home had been destroyed by fire except the piano. A passerby remarked, "How can you practice scales at such a time?" She replied, "Oh, I must practice, no matter what happens!" It has been said that before she introduced the charming "Waltzing Doll," by Poldini, to American audiences she practiced it for one year to make sure her rendition of it was perfect enough to present to the public.~~~from Success in Piano Teaching, by Julia Broughton
Metronomes have a place in practicing, but not a big one. They can tell you when you are veering off tempo, but that doesn't always mean you shouldn't veer off. We are human beings, not machines. Human rhythm is flexible, not mechanical. It breathes. Human pulse isn't rigid. It fluctuates. If you practice a lot with a metronome you suppress your natural rhythm. You put your human wildness in a box and rob yourself of your freedom. It's possible to rely more on your inner sense of rhythm.
Great artists feel the pulse of music unerringly, but the rhythm has vitality, the living elasticity of breath and movement. The mechanical beat of an electronic synthesizer, which is used in many recordings of rock music, is abysmally lacking in joy and vitality. The pulse is relentless, rigid and attacks you like the sound of any other machine you may hear – in a factory or on a city street. Even fierce music needs to be fierce in a human way, not like a mechanical monster.
Occasionally it may be helpful to use the metronome to break the habit of being rhythmically unsteady, to relax a tightness that has crept into your execution of a passage and is throwing off your natural sense of rhythm. But to use a metronome this way you have to work slowly so that you can relax and let the old way of playing or singing the music gently fall apart. — from The Art Of Practicing by Madeleine Bruser
