dawn's piano

Summer Day Camps are a major feature of summer for lots of children, and I am especially proud of our local Espressivo Piano Camp and what we are able to offer piano students for that first week of June each year. In this blog post, I wanted to share some highlights from this year's camp! One of my favorite sessions at piano camp for encouraging student curiosity and broadening musical experience and understanding, is our guest teacher session that happens in the middle of our week. This year we had pianist and organist Steve Gustafson come and give us an introduction to the organ. We learned a bit of the instrument's long history, and how it dates way back to before the Roman Era, and students got to pass around a few of the different types of pipes as we listened to the sounds they make and learned about the different stops and manuals on the organ.  Students even got the chance to volunteer to play the organ! Here are a couple Dawn's Piano students who gave it a try:  Ou...

Who else grew up reading The Polar Express by Chris Van Allsburg and then double checking that you could still hear the jingle bell tree ornaments every Christmas? It can't be just me, right? I remember being pretty excited when the movie came out many years ago now, and I still tend to watch it each year during December. But it was only a year or two ago that I actually got the itch to play some of the music. Inspiration is funny, sometimes it just hits you after years of enjoying a thing and you suddenly want to engage with it in a new way.  Now, being a full time piano teacher means that the majority of the arrangements I actually sit down to write tend to be with students in mind. BUT every once in a while, I'll have the itch to play a song myself, and not be able to find an arrangement that I love. Last Christmas I had that happen with the song When Christmas Comes to Town from the  The Polar Express.  I had just finished working on an arrangement of Believe arr. by ...

Our studio got an exciting upgrade in July with the addition of this beautiful Kawai RX-2 Grand Piano!  I knew going to the Sounds Great Retail Retirement Sale unsupervised could get me into trouble (the good kind!) because the action on our main studio piano had been deteriorating pretty rapidly, and I had already started thinking about how to get a newer instrument in the next year or two. . . So off I went. I played several different pianos while I was there, and there were a lot of great options. Some old Steinways, a couple excellent Baldwins, and I did spend some time with a Chickering concert grand which would have been much too large for our studio, but was a lovely instrument.  (I grew up playing a Chickering, so they will always have a special place in my heart.) But the one really spoke to me as a good studio instrument and a real investment in my students' growth for many years was this Kawai professional grand, and I ended up signing the purchase agreement before ...

It's Recital Day!  All our performers, from the preschool beginners up through late intermediate and advanced students have worked hard on making wonderful music this year, and they have prepared a great show for us today. Family & friends are invited   to tune in as well, so be sure to share viewing info with anyone who will want to cheer on your piano kids. For students who've been attending lessons in-person,  check your piano kid's binder  for a recital program like the one pictured here, as well as some compliment cards. The cards will be a great way to bring in a sense of studio community to our online show. And as an extra incentive, students can earn some final beads for their year-end lanyards by writing encouraging compliments to their fellow performers while watching the show. Just bring your filled out cards back to the studio at your lessons next week! For online students, or anyone else who would like a program, you can download one here ....

"What do the pedals do?" is one of the most asked questions in beginning piano lessons, and not surprisingly so. They're intriguing, and most beginning students can't quite resist testing them out to see what they do. I like to take that curiosity as a learning opportunity to talk about how we need treat the instrument (pedals are not for stomping on), as well as how they work mechanically within the instrument. So here's the quick run-down for those of you studio parents who may have curious piano kids at home, or maybe you're just wondering for yourself. Most acoustic pianos have 3 pedals, and in today's post I'll be outlining the functions of each one, and quick examples of when we might use them. Starting all the way on the right we have our most commonly used pedal called the Damper Pedal, or sometimes the Sustain Pedal. It's job is to lift all the dampers to prevent the strings from being silenced when the keys are released. This...

Welcome to our Fall 2019 Online Video Recital! Thank you for tuning in.  Over the past month or so, piano students have been working hard both at home and in the studio on their recital selections, and once a piece was prepared we would grab a video for this online performance. What you'll watch below is a compilation of all those collected videos. This online format for our first recital of the school year provides a lower stress performance opportunity, while still providing the essential practice in working a piece up to a performance level. It also provides a way for all of Dawn's Piano students, in McPherson and online around the country, to participate in a recital together. And I especially really like this format is because it's perfect to share with out of town friends and family who want to cheer on your piano kid but might not be able to attend a traditional recital setting.  Parents, friends and family, thank you for supporting your piano kids on t...

The McPherson Area Piano Teachers' League hosted it's second annual Espressivo Piano Camp during the first week of June. Our camp consisted of almost 30 area piano students and area teachers Brett Janssen, Shulah Neff, Dan Masterson & Dawn Ivers who worked together on growing in our understanding of Music History, Performance, Music Theory, Improvisation & Composing in a fun summer day camp environment. This type of camp experience is so valuable to piano students because so much of the time piano is a solitary activity with practice at home & lesson time having to focus on individualized learning. This means that for piano students, having the opportunity to dig into some extra musical subjects and have fun with musical peers reinforces the value and the fun of what they are learning. In addition to the classes, the camp featured a special session by guest teacher, Jean Kennedy all about the guitar, and THREE performances. The first performances on Thursday wa...

It's time for another Sheet Music feature! This piece has been a very popular one in our studio this year after one student performed it in our Fall Recital. And I have to say, I'm loving the way it's motivating practice and musicality in young students.  A Million Dreams , arranged here for late beginning piano, offers young musicians the chance to play a solo that is familiar and sure to inspire. It will also stretch beginning pianists to play expressively and carry the melody between two hands. The use of the pedal provides an optional extra layer for later beginners.  You can listen to this arrangement, and preview the sheet music below. This music is published through Sheet Music Plus.   look inside A Million Dreams - Easy Piano Solo By The Greatest Showman. Arranged by Dawn Ivers. Solo Part. 4 pages. Published by Dawn Ivers (H0.401931-SC000017506). If you are interes...

This past Saturday (April 27th) students of Dawn's Piano gave their Spring Recital, and if I do say so myself, I thought we had a terrific show! Being a studio that relocated just this year means that we had lots of beginning students participating in their first ever recital with a few seasoned intermediate students sprinkled in. I enjoyed seeing the confidence on stage, and the personality & musical expression of each student as they performed. It was fun to have them cheer each other on, and share compliments after the show during our Ice Cream Reception (which was earned when each student completed the 20 Piece Challenge!). Online students from the Pasadena area also had a live Recital on Saturday, where they performed in the joint studio recital of my former associate teachers Aki Saito & Mallory Byers . Dawn's Piano was represented by 5 students there, and I'm so proud of each of their progress in adapting to an online lesson format and continuing to grow i...

One of my current students asked to learn this song, and I must say this was a fun piece to put together for late beginning piano. I strongly encourage my students to pursue playing the music they like, because it connects us to our own learning process and demonstrates the value of the skill we are learning. This pop/rock classic offers good practice in syncopation, changing key signatures and dynamic range. Because the themes are repetitive, it works well as a late beginning piano solo with only a couple rhythms & passages to work out, and then the player's job is just to follow the patterns and repeats, and have fun. As with all my arrangements of popular pieces, the sheet music is available for purchase on Sheet Music Plus where you can also preview the sheet music. look inside Africa by Toto - Easy Piano Solo By Toto. Solo Part. 6 pages. Published by Dawn Ivers (H0.510797-SC000003618). Y...

Progress in piano study can be difficult to recognize because it is so gradual. This can sometimes feel discouraging for the student, because even though we make strides from week to week, it's not always easily measurable from the student's perspective. The best way to remedy this is to track and celebrate long term progress. Those who follow the studio on social media will know that I often share student videos. In addition to celebrating current success, these videos can also be a way of marking where we've been so at a later time students can look back and see how far they've come. But you can go further than this by keeping a video or audio journal of your child's piano progress.  In episode 128 of the Piano Parent Podcast Shelly gives us some tips on how to keep just such a video or audio journal of a piano student's musical journey. You can listen to the episode right here, or read the full show notes on the podcast's website :      One of ...

This will be the last post for 2018! I can't believe we're already here. Since the studio will be on break the next couple weeks, the blog will be going silent until January as well. I hope you all enjoy a wonderful, peaceful break with your families. And like last year , I'm using this final post of 2018 to highlight some of the truly awesome things you all have accomplished this year.  This year has definitely seen a lot of change for the studio. Here are some of the highlights! On April 22nd, we had our final Recital in California where with both Aki & Mallory . With over 100 students performing, and trying to say good-bye since I was heading off towards Kansas the following day, we barely finished the show before the library kicked us out, and stayed talking in the parking lot well after the library's closing time. That Recital was very dear to me, and despite it being a crazy, hectic & overwhelming day, I treasured getting to see each student pe...