Playing for ballet class tips #3: Get yourself a fiddle book
Searching for petit allegro music “There are two parts of the class where you need more music,” the late Anatoli Grigoriev said to me after I’d played for him a…
Playing for ballet class tip #2: It’s all about the left hand, not the right
Nine times out of ten, the secret of being a good dance pianist is to concentrate on what your left hand is doing rather than your right. As pianists, we…
Playing for ballet class tips #1: Listen to yourself and the room
If you play for class a lot, it's easy to get into a habit of being so focused on what the dancers are doing, and what the teacher wants, that…
Advent calendar 2012: playing for ballet classes
It’s that time of year again when I try to blog for 25 days in a row for Advent, on something to do with dance and music. This year it’s…
IT tips #25: Use a notebook for the big stuff in life
Use conventional tools if they’re better suited to the job at hand. Notebooks (real notebooks, not the electronic kind) are cheap, robust, durable, don’t need electricity, don’t require any special…
IT tips #24: How to make time-saving templates in Word
A real template in Word is a thing of beauty and magic that can be used to save you a lot of time and make your computer do what it…