Piano Students

Give the Gift of Piano Lessons to Your Child This Holiday Season

Julie Cleveland For Parents, Piano lessons for kids, Piano lessons for kids and adults, Piano Students , , , , ,

From now until December 20, the Cape Ann Piano Studio is offering a 20% discount off of the remaining Winter Quarter at the studio for school-age children (10 45-minute lessons). This offer applies to both beginner and transfer students. Lessons begin January 7.*

Please email or call for more information.

A young student plays a duet with his mom at our first-ever annual Holiday Pizza and Piano Party. 🙂

 

*This discounted offer is for young students only.
Adults seeking lessons, you can learn more by visiting my Adult Lessons page, and please contact me if you would like more information.

Can’t make the lesson this week? Let’s do a FaceTime or Skype lesson instead!

Julie Cleveland Piano lessons for kids, Piano Recitals, Piano Students

Last night’s lesson with two of my advanced students who couldn’t make their lesson times this week:
They’re preparing their pieces for our Annual Spring Recital on June 8th. (Apologies for low-quality video/audio, I’m holding my iPhone!)
First clip: “Memento”

Second clip: Fantasie in D Minor (Mozart)

Julie Cleveland’s Students Performing at Shalin Liu Performance Center this Sunday

Julie Cleveland Piano Recitals, Piano Students , , , ,

This Sunday, four of my students will be taking part in the annual North Shore Piano Teachers’ Guild Shalin Liu Piano Recitals. The Guild holds three recitals in one afternoon each spring at the Shalin Liu Performance Center, in which students of piano teachers from around the North Shore participate. Each recital is about 50 minutes long. Three of my students are performing in the 1:00 pm recital, and one in the 2:30 pm recital. Very very proud of how hard these students have worked for this performance. 🙂

Here’s one of my students who participated in last year’s Shalin recitals:

North Shore Piano Teachers’ Guild Piano Recitals
Sunday, April 8, 3 recitals: 1, 2:30 and 4 pm
Shalin Liu Performance Center
Rockport, MA
Free and Open to the Public

Blog Post Share: 15 things to know to support your child learning to play the piano

Julie Cleveland Benefits of Music Lessons, Piano lessons for kids, Piano Students, Piano Teaching , , , ,

This is one of the best blog posts I’ve read on the subject of how to help and support your child, written by another piano instructor, Elissa Milne, who lives in Australia. I agree with every one of these 15 things! 🙂

Here are the absolute basics that you need to know to be able to support your family’s journey into profound musicianship.

15 Things You Need to Know About Supporting Your Child Learning to Play the Piano

https://elissamilne.wordpress.com/2014/09/10/15-things-you-need-to-know-about-supporting-your-child-learning-to-play-the-piano/

Annual Practice for the Elephants: Become a Matching Donor Today!

Julie Cleveland Benefits of Music Lessons, Piano lessons for kids, Piano practice incentives, Piano Students , , ,

Cape Ann Piano Studio’s Annual Practice for the Elephants has just ended—my students practice for the month of May each year for this worthy cause. They practice to raise money to foster baby elephants, who have been orphaned due to the illegal poaching of elephants for their ivory tusks.
Keep reading to find out how you can match the students’ earnings!

Last year’s Annual Spring Recital

About Practicing for the Elephants

Students earn two cents for every minute practiced over the course of 4 weeks. At the end, we total up the minutes to figure out how much each student has raised. Students’ sponsors can be parents, grandparents, teachers and friend, aunts, uncles, anyone!

If any of you would like to be a matching donor for a student (average money raised per student is about $10-12) please contact me. Your match makes each student feel even more proud of their accomplishment. 🙂
It’s $50 a year to foster an orphaned elephant at the DSWT. Your contribution matching a student’s total earnings for practicing for a month goes to an important cause: saving the African elephant from extinction.

If you’d like to be a matching donor for a great cause, please contact me and I will pair you up with a student! 

Water Color by Angela Sheldrick

Why Pianos and Elephants?

As pianists we are very aware of the history of using ivory for piano keys and that the manufacture of pianos once contributed to the trade in ivory. But today, piano technicians use polymers and mixtures of plastics to create the look and feel of ivory for our piano keys, bypassing entirely the illegal trade in ivory elephant tusks

Where Our Donations Go

The donations collected go to sponsor abandoned baby elephant cubs whose mother or father was killed from illegal poaching of ivory in Africa. The orphaned baby elephants are raised and kept safe for later release by the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust Foundation in Nairobi, Kenya where it operates the Tsavo East National Park.
Please also visit the The David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust website.
The DSWT on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thedswt/
Here’s another website, iworry.org, where you can take action toward ending the ivory trade.

Elephants We Have Fostered

Barsilinga (boy)
Barsilinga (boy)
Rorogoi (girl)
Rorogoi (girl)

 

Chemi Chemi (boy)
Chemi Chemi (boy)

 

This wonderful and amazing contest was created by fellow piano instructor, Penny Lazarus.

How to Practice Anything (especially the piano)

Julie Cleveland Adult Piano Students, Benefits of Music Lessons, For Piano Parents, Piano lessons for kids and adults, Piano Students , , , , , , ,

This blog post by a fellow piano teacher is wonderful, I can say that her advice here is invaluable. (Beta-tested it this summer.) 😉

This is wonderful reading for not only parents, but for older students, too. And piano teachers!

Here is the link. You can also download it here as a PDF to print it out to read it again and again.

How to Practice Anything
by Regina Ngo
http://rmslearning.me/how-to-practice-anything/

Regina Ngo
Regina’s Music Studio, S. Pasadena, CA
Website: http://rmslearning.me

Students Perform at Shalin Liu in NSPTG Recitals

Julie Cleveland Classical Music, Piano Recitals, Piano Students , ,

˙Four students of the Cape Ann Piano Studio performed in a recital as part of the North Shore Piano Teachers’ Guild Shalin Liu Piano Recitals on Sunday, April 3.
From left to right, Adelaide N., Julie Cleveland, Martina G., and Cat and Addie M.

So proud of my students, they all did a wonderful job! Bravo!

Students of Cape Ann Piano Studio at the Shalin Liu Performance Center.
Students of Cape Ann Piano Studio at the Shalin Liu Performance Center.

My Students Playing at Shalin Liu this Sunday

Julie Cleveland Classical Music, Piano Performance Opportunities, Piano Students , , ,

Four of my students will be performing this Sunday at the Shalin Liu Performance Center in Rockport, as part of the North Shore Piano Teachers’ Guild Shalin Liu Piano Recitals.
Piano students from around the North Shore will be performing in three separate recitals; my students will be performing in the 2:30 pm recital, playing pieces by composers Dmitry Kabalevsky and Aram Khachaturian, and contemporary composers Catherine Rollin and Martha Mier.

Details:
North Shore Piano Teachers’ Guild Shalin Liu Piano Recitals
Sunday, April 3, 2016, Miss Julie’s piano students perform in the 2:30 pm recital (approximately 1 hour)
Recital is free of charge, handicapped accessible.

Shalin Liu Performance Center, 37 Main St., Rockport, MA 01966

Please visit www.rockportmusic.org for info regarding directions and parking; if you’re coming, allow extra time for parking!

The Shalin Liu (the recitals will be during the day though) at night, what a view!
The Shalin Liu at night, what a view!

North Shore Piano Teachers’ Guild November Recital for Students

Julie Cleveland Piano lessons for kids and adults, Piano Performance Opportunities, Piano Students , , , , , ,

The first of the Guild concerts for the 2015–16 school year is:

Day: Sun. Nov. 15, 2015
Place: Second Congregational Church, 35 Conant St., Beverly 01915 (off Exit 20, headed toward Wenham)
Times: Two afternoon concerts start times TBD (to accommodate all of the teachers’ students, usually a 1:30 and a 2:30 program, each about 45 minutes long)

I encourage my students – of all ages and levels – to participate! Mostly families and friends attend and all the teachers and students are very supportive of one another. Recital is slightly more formal than the one I hold in June; it’s a good opportunity for those students who like the challenge of performing in front of a friendly and enthusiastic audience. 🙂
Students should be well prepared and are encouraged to play pieces from memory but use of music is allowed.
Any students interested in performing will be playing pieces they have already learned well; we will perfect them between now and the concert.

There is an $8 recital fee. Email or call or ask about the concert in the lesson!