I have been tackling salad dressings lately, long on that hypothetical to-do list.  I eat a lot of salad--green leafy things worm their way onto my plate nearly every day.  In fact, last week I chipped off my front tooth on a fork while eating a salad.  This was the third time I have done this, as I explained to the dentist when I went to have my tooth repaired once again.  "Lettuce can be the hardest thing to eat," she sympathized kindly.  For a while around here, we had a default vinaigrette we made, which I loved but grew tired of.  In recent months,  I have been lazy and have enjoyed the ease and convenience of dumping copious amounts of store-bought dressing on my salads, but I wonder about this habit when reading the long list of unpronounceable ingredients in many of them.  This can't be particularly healthy, and may even be undermining any positive benefits salads would otherwise be giving me.  So last week I decided to try making my own salad dressings on a daily basis.

I approach this as I attack most things:  I learn the general concepts behind the task and then I improvise from there.  This approach makes my husband and best friend shudder, both of whom have never seen a recipe they didn't love and follow precisely.  Substitute?  Never.  I have never not substituted, leading to all kinds of disasters in the kitchen.  Salad dressings, I read, are easy.  They are just oil and vinegar, and then whatever else you want.  I love everything about this, yesterday experimenting madly with a salad dressing of orange juice, lemon juice, crushed red peppers, thyme and olive oil. 

This is exactly how I view teaching in general and piano technique teaching in particular.  Give me the general concept and let me fly.  I suppose it is this nonchalance about any strict pedagogical theory that makes me puzzled when I learn other teachers don't function like this, instead adhering strictly to a prescribed set of method books: lesson, performance, theory, technique.  Teaching strictly out of method books may be the equivalent of succumbing to the convenience of store-bought salad dressing--it is easy, requires no thinking, and doesn't demand anything of me.  In the end, not so good for any of us.   I am perplexed by the idea that there is anything radical about creating and  improvising technique exercises every week.  "Use those resources to get some general ideas and then run with them!" I want to scream to reluctant teachers.  To me the end goal is obvious:  we want students who are at ease playing in any key on the piano, we want students with a wide range of sounds and touches, we want students playing with such comfort and familiarity that they don't have to think about notes, but can concentrate on tone and character, nuance and artistry.  To this end, there are a million and one paths. 

Of course, I will undoubtedly resort to store-bought salad dressings in moments of panic and extreme busyness, just as I regularly browse technique books for ideas I can use and improvise upon.  It doesn't have to be all or nothing, but can be a lovely combination of a little of this, a bit of that.

Here are a few more early five-finger positions to play with:

Last week I was in Denver for the MTNA convention.  This isn't something I do every year, but certainly every few, and with the convention relatively close this seemed like a good time to attend.  Matt and I flew up a few days early; he was in need of a getaway after the pressures of Holy Week and Easter.  As someone who works from home, I'm always in need of an escape.  For two days, we ate our way through downtown Denver.  We started our culinary adventures with lunch at The Cheesecake Factory, which, admittedly, is embarrassing to confess.   But after spending several wonderful hours at the Denver Art Museum taking in an Impressionist exhibit in its impressive new building, I was ready for something good and familiar.  Besides, I have eaten amazing salads at Cheesecake Factory in the past, and Albuquerque doesn't have one.  Even though it was lunch, we must have waited nearly a half-hour for a table, and then the hostess marched us to our seats spouting the exact same pleasantries I had overheard her tell every other person.  Our food was good, but not spectacular, and the waitress had the identical habit as the hostess of saying word for word the same thing to every table she served.  I became annoyed quickly, and commented about the lack of personality of the whole scene to Matt.  He replied, "In their defense, they do have the word 'factory' in their name."

Shaking off the whole anonymous lunch experience, that first night we ate dinner at Strings, a restaurant we had visited on our honeymoon some 14 years ago.  After a wonderful meal and a delicious bottle of wine, the waiting brought us free dessert, thinking that we were celebrating an anniversary.   We were, of sorts, not having set foot in Denver since that night many years ago.  The next day we had an amazing lunch at a Mexican place called Tamayo.  This meal was a revelation to us, accustomed as we are to all New Mexican food being "smothered."  (It is said that this is the most common verb on menus in this state:  "smothered in chile," "smothered in cheese," and so on.)  This Mexican meal was not smothered; in fact the individual ingredients popped out distinctly.  I had beer-battered fish tacos with pico and cabbage that danced in my mouth.  Delicious.  Another  night we ate dinner at a small Italian cafe, Osteria Marco, noteworthy for its lack of tourists.  The menu was simple and casual, but they prepared their own meats and made their own cheese.  In fact, there was a "cheese woman."  What is not to like about this?   Still another lunch we walked over to Steuben's Fine Foods, because we had read about their lobster rolls.  Lobster rolls were not something we were anticipating eating in land-locked Denver, but the owner of this diner had an uncle who owned a supper club in Boston in the 1950s, and this place was an homage to him--complete with the best lobster roll and fries I have ever eaten.  That statement includes all the lobster rolls I have had in New England.  Who would have thought?

After two days of eating, Matt went home and my friend Anne joined me for the convention.  Some years the convention gets me all fired up and sends me home with dozens of ideas to try immediately.  This was not one of those conventions, but I made some good connections, saw some old friends, attended a meeting I needed be at.  Traveling back home, I was struck how very few new (or even old) tangible ideas I had to take back to my teaching, and the next day I had to hit the ground running--my first lesson showing up at 8am.  But in spite of that, I had a fantastic teaching week; the kids were well prepared, I was energetic and on fire, even considering the extra long week.  It reminded me that many times I don't need a convention to get re-inspired, I just need a break.

On the heels of all this, my best friend from Boston moved to Albuquerque, renting a house just around the corner.  It feels like family to have Lora here, for there are very few people in the world I could rely on as easily and as simply as Lora.  In a thousand and one ways, it will be wonderful to have her around the corner, and hopefully comforting to her to have me two blocks away.  But it isn't without its potential challenges, for although I have the best friends one could have, most live far away.  This is new territory to have a best friend in the same town, let alone in the same 'hood.  I'm thrilled, but as Matt says, I do like my boundaries.  Sometimes he is suspicious I would do well with him  being long-distance too.   What will it be like to have a friend dropping in on a random weeknight, or phoning for a cup of sugar?  I hope we fall into the easy habit of checking in to see what the other needs when we head out to the store, or bringing back gelato to the other when one of us visits the Italian ice cream shop up the street.   I think we Americans are, in large, too isolated from one another, that we are out of the habit of thinking about helping each other as a matter of routine.  Just last week, my friend Anne confessed that she had had a near breakdown about getting everything done before guests arrived.  "Why didn't you call me and ask me to help clean your house for  an hour?"  I asked her.  "You know I would have been glad to help."  It was clear it had never occurred to her that this was an option, but if the roles were reversed, she would have been at my house sponge in hand in a heartbeat.  In her defense, I'm not sure I would have been quick to ask for her help either, no matter how stressed out I might be.  I'd like to change that, however, and learn to take and receive other's kindnesses better.  If nothing else, I'd just like to connect more with my circle of friends and loved ones.  Having Lora down the street is a great way to start. 

In dozens of ways, we are back at it: working at living a normal life after the pressures of the Easter season, after the mid-semester travels and convention.  Just ahead lie spring recitals and contests, final performance classes and workshops.  One high school student asked me if we had done anything at the convention to "revolutionize piano."  When I admitted that we had not, he exclaimed, "I know what you could do!  You could add an extra key.   That'd change everything!"

At the moment I am OK with not changing everything, enjoying an unexpected respite of normal busy days, instead of extraordinary overflowing ones.  Spring is in full bloom.  The wisteria hanging off every trellis in town; the tulips and irises blooming their hearts out.  Even though this is the desert, we are experiencing a rare fiesta of color, like the technicolor of Oz after the black and white of Dorothy's Kansas home.  Tomorrow friends are coming over for Sunday brunch with "bubbles" as my friend Jerome says.  Tonight Matt has promised me cocktails in the courtyard.  Lora just called saying she has finished at the gym and she'd stop by as soon as she went to Walgreens.   As I write this an ice cream truck is going down the street playing "Greensleeves," an odd departure from the overly saccharined music it usually gives us.  Aside from this, no one is revolutionizing much of anything around here, and on this lazy Saturday afternoon, that seems suddenly, completely, right. 

Recently I spent a day judging a piano competition in Los Alamos.  This was the kind of contest where the students aren't actually pitted against each other; instead they play for a rating and comments from a judge.  In this particular event, there are some guidelines:  students must play three contrasting pieces from three different styles or periods, and must prepare technique work (i.e. scales, chord progressions, arpeggios) in the key of each piece.  It was a long day, but a good one.  Matt and I spent the previous night in Santa Fe--ate a couple of good meals, hung out in the hotel room, generally wound down from another long week.  Saturday morning I was up early, had breakfast in the French cafe on the plaza, and then drove up through the mountains to White Rock, where my judging site was located. 

The organizer of the event had done a good job with the scheduling:  the students weren't so closely packed together that I didn't have time to write thorough comments, and she had scheduled 15-minute breaks every few hours.  Enough time for me to stretch my legs and take a walk around the block, or go to the bathroom.  When judging, I never lack for things to say or comment on.  Indeed the only challenge is not writing a full page just about the first scale I hear.   I don't want to make a career out of judging, but I want these kinds of opportunities available to my students, so I am happy to take my turn when the time comes.  Aside from an aching hand from writing so much, I was a pretty contented judge. 

But as I watched the parade of students marching in to play for me, I was struck by several things.  First of all, as someone who take a very holistic approach to teaching theory and technique, I was alarmed by the students I saw who seemed to have only learned scales and chords for this particular contest.  The technique work was sometimes in the wrong key.  This was not out of any attempt to be sneaky, I think, but rather simply that the student might have been confused about which scale went with which piece, so unrelated the two things seemed to be in their minds.  The technique work was sometimes at a very different level than the pieces.  Maybe the student was playing mid-elementary level pieces but trying to get through--unsuccessfully I might add--two-octave hands-together harmonic minor scales.  This was unsettling, indeed, and a pretty good indication that these scales must have been learned just for this particular event.  "Teaching to the test" is what I would call it. 

Oh, I do it too sometimes, when faced with requirements that don't necessarily match up with how I teach on a weekly basis.  I think technique requirements are a good thing generally, but wonder if there isn't a way to make it both more specific and less constricted at the same time.  Wouldn't it be possible to set the general requirements for technique at every level in very specific ways-- for example: level one, hands alone five-finger patterns; level eight: four-octave scales hands together--but leave open how the technique had to be played.  I would have loved to see some interesting new ways to practice and play scales and arpeggios; after all, I assign these things in a million various ways every week.  As a teacher, I would love to be able to send my students to such events with a more natural example of how they were currently practicing their scales, instead of having the method dictated to us.  Requiring the technique work and the literature to be at the same level would solve the problem I saw of students playing technique work that was too hard (or too easy).  Students in early literature should be playing a ton of five-finger positions, and later, full octave scales with hands together.   Forcing that the level of the technique and the literature be the same would be better for the students and the teachers.  Allowing the technique to be played in any number of ways (staccato, legato, crescendo-decrescendo, eighth-notes, triplets, one octave, three octaves, or whatever ever creative approach used in the studio), would make things more interesting for the judge.

In spite of my speed and ease in writing lots of comments, it struck me that three pieces and all of the corresponding technique work was a lot to deal with when crammed into eight minutes.  I stopped making comments when I ran out of room on the judging sheet (sometimes even after I had  only heard half of what was prepared), and I am sure it was plenty for the students and their teachers to think about and wrestle with.  Some kids raced through their playing:  writing furiously, I often had no idea what piece they were  doing or what was coming next. My confusion wasn't a problem in terms of having something to say, but did make the whole thing rather frantic.  I know as a teacher that these kinds of competitions are culminating events, and the the real growth is in the preparation, not in the eight minutes with the judge.  However, I wondered if there wasn't a way of making the whole thing a little more engaging for everyone.  Because I knew I had 35 kids to listen to that day and because I didn't want to make the students (and teachers!) nervous with my questions, I hesitated to go much beyond the cheerful pleasantries of conversation, but I would have loved to have been able to freely ask students about their pieces, the styles they represent, the key signatures of the technique work.  In other words, to check in and make sure the learning was really thorough and more than just notes and rhythms.  As a teacher, I am always aiming for my students to be able to converse comfortably about anything prepared for a performance; I would be thrilled to have my students given the chance to have these conversations with an interested judge. Of course, this requires more in terms of preparation, but if we are already going to this level of effort, it is only a good thing if students can explain the structure and style of their music, and give their opinions (and even their struggles and triumphs!) about their process.  This would also take more time, something always in short supply, but I believe it would result in a more thorough, organic experience for the students.  It would also require the teachers to work differently, and perhaps more holistically.  A good judge would be able to balance the need to have students play their entire prepared work, with the time reserved to talk specifically about one or two things.  I can imagine it might go something like  this:

"Hi Susan.  What do you have to play for me today?"

"I am going to play 'Minuet' by Bach, 'Sonatina' by Clementi, and 'Rhythm Roulette' by Dennis Alexander."

"Wonderful.  What key is the Sonatina in and which movement are you playing?" 

"I am playing the third movement in the key of G major."

"Could I hear a G major scale then?"

....

"'Rhythm Roulette' is one of my favorite pieces.  Do you know Dennis Alexander lives in Albuquerque?" 


...and so on.  This wouldn't have to take a great deal of time, but ideally would make students more learned and more engaged in every part of their work. 

Finally, I know that I participate in these kinds of events because they make me better as a teacher.  I always learn things from thoughtful judges' comments.  I am sometimes taken aback by the same comment on multiple judging sheets, realizing that this must be something I need to work on as a teacher, as it is showing up repeatedly in my students' work.  Requiring multiple styles and music from different musical periods means that I have to work more carefully, making sure my students don't fall into easy ruts of playing all 20th century music, or all sonatinas.  But this very point has got me thinking.  I wonder if we haven't fallen unexpectedly into a new period of piano pedagogy.  In the last 20 years, there has been such an explosion of pedagogical literature (and good music, that kids love and respond to) that I think we have a new category to work with:  modern/contemporary pedagogical pieces.  These would be the Martha Mier, Dennis Alexander, Robert Vandall standards that we all teach and that our students want to play.  Of course, these are in a variety of styles:  neo-classical, neo-romantic, etc. but nevertheless seems to fall into a specific general category of their own.  I wouldn't want to send an intermediate level student into a contest with three of these kinds of pieces, any more than I would want to send them in with three Schumann or Kabalevsky pieces, but teaching this good literature is not only practical, it is  important.  It supports living, working composers, and counters the popular notion that "classical" music training is all about dead white guys.  After all, the history of pedagogical composition is a long one, and there is a good chance that some of this current music on our teaching shelves will make its way into the standard literature in time.  But until then, let's acknowledge and celebrate it by giving it a category of its own, and not lumping it into 20th-century literature.  I don't want to be penalized for teaching Bartok and Alexander, that seems insane and certainly misses the point of using this engaging music.  But under our current system, even though the 20th century has been over for seven years, we classify both Bartok and Alexander as simply "20th century" or "Modern".  I think this group of pedagogical music is different, refreshingly so.  Some of it may make it into standard piano literature, some won't, but for now, I'd like to see it given its own specific and recognized category. 

As always, there is little doubt that I learned more than any of the students I heard.  As I prepare my students over the next few weeks for the same event in our local chapter, I think I'll be braver about not following the rules, about not teaching to the test, about using less familiar, but charming, literature instead of the old war-horses.  I'm still a young teacher, quick to want to obey the system, especially in a new place with unfamiliar rules.  However, events that make us more thorough teachers help all of us, and I know it has to begin in my own studio in the next month.  Just today I told a student that I had decided he could play his favorite Dennis Alexander piece and the Persichetti piece for our upcoming contest next month. "Yeah!"  he told me, eyes glowing, "You know, I love them both!!"  

That's the point, isn't it?