Dear Friends,

Greetings from Indianapolis! It's finally starting to feel like fall. I hope you're experiencing equally lovely weather in your part of the world.

Before we get started, I wanted to let you know that I have two performances coming up in November.

• Monday November 9, 8:00 pm: Bowling Green State University in Bowling Green, Ohio.
• Thursday, November 12, 7:00 pm: Harding University in Searcy, Arkansas.

On both programs I'll be performing Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel's "The Year" and will be speaking from the stage about the piece.

Anyway, last night I attended a recital given by a former student of mine, Liam, who graduated from Butler about five years ago with a master's degree. Throughout the evening, I noticed several things I wanted to share with you.

Liam teaches a full studio of piano students out of his home. Since he has no affiliation with a school or institution, there's no performance venue that's automatically available to him, the way it is with collegiate faculty like me.

So he created one himself: he rented a local church with a great piano and lovely acoustics, publicized the recital to his network, and set a suggested donation to recoup the costs.

I mention this because it would have been so easy for him to say, "I miss performing, but I don't have any opportunities." Instead, he just created a performance opportunity for himself.

I know Liam is a busy guy, and so I was especially impressed at his level of preparation. Everything was solidly memorized and he played with commitment and passion. After the recital (with the secret agenda that he might say something useful that I could write to you about!), I asked him what his strategies had been for practicing and preparing the program.

"It's so much harder to practice when you're not in graduate school," he laughed. "In graduate school everything is wide open for you. When you're out, you have to protect your practice time."

He told me about a whiteboard hanging in his home teaching studio. Every Monday, he updates it with the number of hours he practiced each day in the previous week. His students see it every time they walk in.

When I asked him why he posts the hours, he said it was for the accountability, and also to show his students he's walking the walk. If he's asking his students to practice but not practicing himself, they'll see it right there on the whiteboard.

Another thing that I noticed: during the recital, Liam thanked his good friend Sam (another former student of mine!) who had heard the program "at least five times." He had also done run-throughs at different people's homes and on different pianos, because the touch was different from his instrument at home. He told me afterwards that those practice performances were essential to his preparation.

But the main thing I want to tell you about Liam's recital doesn't have anything to do with the playing.

Looking around the audience, I saw several different "generations" of my former students, meaning they were at my university at different times and didn't all overlap with each other. Because Indianapolis is a big market, quite a few of my students stay here after graduating, and they become professional colleagues to each other.

They had set aside their Saturday night to come and hear their friend play. They were excited for Liam, for how beautifully he played and how hard he had worked toward this goal.

I'm sure it would have been much harder for Liam to go through the long process of preparing and performing this recital if he didn't feel he was part of a community: his students and their families, his professional colleagues and friends, all pulling for him.

When I think about my own closest professional friendships, many of them go back to my days as a student. What sustains them over all these years is shared values and goals. That's exactly what I saw last night: friends and colleagues united by their commitment to the piano, to teaching, and to each other.

I hope at least one of these four thoughts I'm sharing about Liam's recital resonates with you.

1. If you're looking for performance opportunities, sometimes the best way to do that is to create one yourself.
2. External accountability helps with motivation.
3. The best way to prepare for a performance is to practice performing.
4. Don't try to go it alone. Look for community with others who share your passion for the piano.

I hope there's something helpful in there for you this week. Write back and let me know what you've been up to. I don't always have the ability to reply, but I do read every response.

👋 Happy practicing,

Kate

P.S. If you’re in Indianapolis and enjoy unique concert experiences, check out this concert by Claire Pendleton, one of my former students, on Saturday, October 24 at draft creative space (1525 Prospect St, Indianapolis, IN 46203).

The concert will be an exploration of the Nocturne, and will include romantic piano music + live electronics under the stars. Feel free to bring a blanket, a picnic, and a friend for a relaxing evening!

​For more info and tickets, click here.​

💜 Picks of the Week:

🎹 Recording: Chopin Mazurkas, Op. 7. Liam played this whole set on his recital, and it was the first time I'd heard all five of them played on one program. I love how these short pieces explore a range of emotions. I enjoyed this delightful live performance of nos. 1-4 by Yulianna Avdeeva. [Listen here.]

🎼 Book: Play it Again: An Amateur Against the Impossible, by Alan Rusbridger. I've recommended this book before but since I was just talking about the difficulty of finding time to practice when you are a busy professional, it feels especially relevant today. The book follows Alan Rusbridger, then the editor of the Guardian, as he tries to learn Chopin’s Ballade No. 1 in G minor in a single year. The Ballade is notoriously demanding, and Rusbridger is an amateur trying to fit practice into the margins of an intense career. [Buy it here.]

🎧 Podcast: Catherine Kautsky on the Piano Inspires podcast. Kautsky is a professor at Lawrence University, a wonderful pianist, and someone I got to know this summer when we taught together in Hungary. We also share a teacher: Gilbert Kalish. In this interview, she talks about the importance of voicing, why she learned technique through passages rather than exercises, and the connection between physical breathing and musical phrasing. [Listen here.]

🎹 Stay Connected:

• Want help? If you’d like a focused session to get feedback, troubleshoot technical problems, get help making a plan for your practicing, or address other issues you're having in your playing, you can book a session with me here. ​​​
• Find me on Instagram. I share updates on my teaching, performing and practicing, as well as practice and technique tips.