Congratulations Student of the Year!

Caitlin Gilmore is the 2009 Student of the Year. Caitlin started piano lessons a little over 1 1/2 years ago. She always has a postive attitude and a sweet smile when she walks in the door to lessons. Caitlin has unbelievable enthusiasm when she comes to lessons every week. She alwasy puts 110% in everything she does.

Caitlin is a great example of what can happen when you put in the time, effort and positive attitude. Congratulations Caitlin!

Here is a video clip of Caitlin playing her recital piece, Arabesque by Burgmuller at lessons.

Spring Recital Fun 09'

Saturday, May 16th students performed at TheaterWorks/Peoria Performing Arts Center at 10:00am. The theme was The Great Composers; Traveling through Time. The recital rehearsals days before were a great chance for everyone to run through their pieces and get ready for the day. Everyone performed well. Afterwards students were presented with awards that they had earned throughout the year.







The following week we celebrated everyone's hard work at the recital with a birthday party for Bach. The program that students worked on this year was "Bach's Birthday Party". The story goes: One of Bach's sons threw Bach a birthday party and invited composers throughout the different time periods to attend. When it was time to have the orchestra play the Happy Birthday song, somebody stole the notes. Students were then invited to solve the mystery and earn clues by doing musical tasks (ie: memorize a song...).

At the party we played Stick the Sticker on Bach's Nose (aka pin the tail on the donkey), Hot Bach (aka Hot Potato), went through a Bach time capsule, had cake and ice cream of course, watched recital performances and played Piano Bingo. A fun way to end the year!

Recital Prep

The big day is coming! This week at lessons students video recorded their pieces and we evaluated them together as individual student and teacher to check and see where they were at and if they were ready for the recital. It was a good learning experience overall. Videotaping or audio recording is always a good way to check yourself and see how you are doing. A lot of times when we play, we don't realize a lot of what might be missing or mistakes that are made. It isn't until we step out of the box and listen that we really see/hear.