A wonderful opportunity
One of my fondest musical memories is of Mrs. Bjarnason, my private flute teacher with whom I studied while I attended high school in Seattle, Washington. I always looked forward to my weekly lesson with “Mrs. B” because she taught me so much more than the basics of flute performance. Her flute studio was very large and many of her students went on to become professional musicians, while others chose to pursue other fields for their careers – choices that all of our students make today. Besides being an excellent teacher, she was also a warm and caring person.
A few times during my lessons, she would pause to bring out a big picture album full of photos of and letters from her past students. Some students were represented by two photos, and Mrs. B would point out the differences – the “before” and “after” images. The first picture often showed a child or teen who looked nervous, pensive. The second would be the same person, but what a difference as a look of confidence utterly transformed them! Mrs. B would then say, “Look what the flute did for her (or for him)”! Or “See how she blossomed by playing the flute?!”
We as independent music teachers are given a wonderful opportunity: To be that person who can help unlock a student’s potential; to be the person who truly listens to students and encourages them as they work to develop their musical skills. We all know that teaching music is much more than it sounds. It often includes helping our students develop life skills that will assist them in their schoolwork and in life in general. We teach them about endurance, discipline, self-control, reverence, maintaining high standards. And so much more.
It was obvious to me that Mrs. B derived great pleasure from watching me and her other students develop as both musicians and human beings, and that she well knew that the study of music in general and flute playing in particular were crucial components of our growth process.
I think I can speak for the rest of my music teaching colleagues here in Vermont that we too enjoy a wonderful opportunity to provide guidance, and then watch our students mature into healthy, musical human beings.
-Laurel Ann Maurer
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VMTA CALENDAR
SPRING FESTIVAL
MARCH 25, 2023
DETAILS BELOW
QUAD STATE FALL CONFERENCE
TBD
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2023
VMTA CALENDAR
March 25, 2023
Spring Festival
Trinity Baptist Church, Williston
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Third Annual Ensemble Festival
– A Huge Success
The third Annual Ensemble Festival was held on November 12, 2022 at the Richmond Library. It was a huge success and a fun event for the 16 performers!
Dads and daughters, moms and daughters, a grandmother, brothers, sisters and
friends were all a part of the Festival. There were ten different ensemble performances which included piano, violin, flute, and clarinet. A large crowd gave the performers a standing ovation at the end.
Participating teachers included Patty Bergeron, Laurel Maurer, and Marie
Johnson.
Please plan to participate in 2023!
Marie Johnson
Ensemble Festival Chair
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President:
Laurel Maurer
802-881-9153
laurelflutemaurer@yahoo.com
Immediate Past President:
Marie Johnson
802-879-8863
President-Elect:
TBD
Secretary:
TBD
Treasurer:
Sarah Williams
802-223-5307
sarah5432@gmail.com
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Conference Chair:
Patty Bergeron (interim)
802-878-9873
pcberg86@gmail.com
Non-Competitive Auditions:
Lilly C. Ramsey
802-879-7425
cldkramsey@comcast.net
Competitive Auditions:
Linda Buermeyer
802-439-6469
lindux@tops-tele.com
Certification:
TBD
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Newsletter:
Jina Smith
802-318-1776
jws682@gmail.com
Membership:
Patricia Cleary Bergeron
802-878-9873
pcberg86@gmail.com
Web Publicist:
Sarah Williams &
Patty Bergeron
Composer Commissioning:
Michael Sitton
802-839-8336
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VMTA 2022 Fall Conference
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For VMTA members who attended the Fall Conference on October 22 at the Richmond Free Library, it was both an occasion offering much to learn from two exciting presenters, and an event simply to enjoy as the first in-person conference since prior to the start of the pandemic. Attendance was not what it might have been prior to 2020, but the enthusiastic group was happy to be sharing the experience in person and included a number of potential new members and first-time attendees.
Kathryn Sherman, piano pedagogy coordinator at The Crane School of Music in northern New York, presented an engaging workshop on curriculum development through elementary levels, with many ideas about branching out from introductory methods into supplemental repertoire, and, following her presentation, gave a memorable masterclass featuring VMTA members’ students.
Following lunch, teacher and physical therapist Abby Halpin, a former student of our own Patty Bergeron, presented an extremely helpful workshop on movement and music, exploring principles of effective posture and movement in performance, and offering numerous practical tips for playing, singing, and teaching to avoid injury and promote efficient, healthy movement.
Expect to hear soon about the upcoming Quad State Conference that VMTA will host in fall 2023, an event where we hope to build upon our exciting return with the 2022 Fall Conference to in-person conference opportunities.
--
Michael Sitton
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A note from your friendly physical therapist…
Sometimes you just have to cram in a lot of practice over a short period of time. I get it. It happens. But how to recover from over-practicing, or as I like to say it, under-recovering? And what does rest and recovery look like?
The first thing to do is to figure out how much practicing and resting feel best for you. This varies from person to person and even varies during a musician’s lifetime, so it’ll take a little trial and error. You may have felt great with one passive day and one active day per week for years, but things change, so you have to shift your schedule. Some musicians need a few weeks or months of an “off-season” every year, and others enjoy playing year-round. Each body and brain is different. Each person’s life circumstances are different. The important thing is that you choose something because it feels best for you. And don’t bother comparing your practice schedule to other people. Their circumstances are different than yours, so they have different needs.
Tips for young musicians:
For musicians under eighteen years old, research suggests that organized activity time (including all practice time, rehearsals, lessons, sports, dance, etc.) should be less than or equal to the number of years of their age. So a ten-year-old ideally does not have more than 10 hours of organized activity time per week. More than that significantly increases a child’s chance of injury or burnout. Free play is unlimited!
There are two types of recovery and rest time to include in your practice schedule.
Active recovery is when you are resting from your normal activity while doing something active. You can still play - just make it feel like something else. Most of these options fall under “free play” for those under eighteen.
Play something you have already mastered that feels easy and fun. For me, my go-to is Gymnopedie No. 1 by Erik Satie.
Play something opposite to the skills you’ve been practicing. If you are playing pieces with a lot of big chords, you might change it up and play something full of long runs.
Have a super short practice session. Focus on one short section if it’s a new piece. Or if you are at a point where you can play through it, just play it once or twice to keep it fresh, but don’t dive into the details.
Passive recovery can be further divided into two options:
Option 1: Full-stop - no music or music-related things that day. These days are non-negotiable to stay healthy. Go skiing or hiking with your family, connect with your friends, learn to bake bread, etc.
Option 2: Continued practice, but without the physical playing of your instrument. This strategy is especially helpful when you need a day off but feel like you need to keep learning.
Listen. Listen to other musicians, listen to the pieces you are working on, and listen to recordings of yourself.
Mark up your music. When I was singing in choral groups, there was always time spent penciling in the markings.
Visualize: read through your score and visualize yourself playing. Research shows that visualizing activity causes the appropriate motor units in muscles to contract. This is a great way to work out the timing and coordination without the load of actually playing the instrument. If you have an event coming up, I would also recommend visualizing how the entire event will go. Set things up well in your mind so that you can feel settled in the ways that the day will unfold.
Logistics and organization: Spend some time doing all the nitty gritty things - answer emails, set up your lessons, clean off your music stand and organize your sheet music. Make future you feel uncluttered and settled in your next practice session.
Make sure to have both passive and active recovery days scattered into your practice routine. But if you’ve had a long period of time of over-practicing, or you’re feeling the beginnings of burnout starting, schedule more passive recovery than usual until you feel better. Future-you will thank you for it!
If you’d like to hear more about this, you can listen to the Rest and Recovery episode of my podcast, Play Life Loudly.
Be well,
Abby Halpin, DPT
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Noteflight Learn
Online Tools for Teaching and Learning
VMTA subscribes to online music notation software that can inspire and liberate you and your students.
Noteflight Learn is an online system for teachers to develop lesson content for composition, theory, and
performance, for example, and for students to explore composing, sharing, and collaborating as part of
their music study.
The Noteflight Learn program includes these standard features:
Accessible on any device
A private community for secure communication and collaboration
Unlimited groups for organizing classes and ensembles
Activity templates for assignments
Perform mode for listening to and performing along with selected parts of a score
Discussion and assignment forums for communication and assessment
Record live audio into scores
Fully compliant with COPPA
The current VMTA NoteflightLearn site includes Content libraries for various Ensembles, Teaching Collections for Composition, Solos, Sight-Reading, Pop, Chorales, Piano, and Guitar, as well as the “Essential Elements” collections for Band and Orchestra. There is access to thousands of digital scores of the most popular repertoire from today’s publishers of teaching material. Students can choose to participate in Online Mentoring, working with professional composers to
improve their compositions. This fee-based feature can include performance opportunities.
As part of your VMTA membership, you and your enrolled students have access to the program from home, school, your studio, the public library – anywhere and anytime. As a registered user, the version of Noteflight you receive is their “premium” editor, a $49 yearly subscription value if purchased
individually. You and your students can complete lesson templates or create unlimited, brand-new compositions. You can edit, playback, print, share, record, and export as audio or other file formats.
Look for details and resources at the following links:
Contact Sarah Williams or complete and send the Enrollment Form on the VMTA website page.
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Join us on Facebook! Please check out the latest VMTA programs and news on the Vermont Music Teachers Association Facebook page!”
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Is your newsletter getting "lost" in your spam folder? You can fix that by following these helpful hints:
If yours is a GMAIL email address and this newsletter doesn’t arrive in your primary INBOX, you can adjust your Gmail settings by following the steps shown here under “Create a filter” - or contact Sarah Williams for assistance.
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VMTA is always looking for new Sponsors or Donors. Anyone who cares about music education can be a Sponsor or Donor. VMTA has publicity brochures and postcards and business cards that provide contact information for prospective supporters. They are designed for distribution to students and their families, and to the public, and are suitable for display in your studio, at your recitals, or at your favorite willing public location. If you or your student families would like to help find new Sponsors or Donors by distributing these items, please ask Sarah Williams to send you a supply of the latest designs. Image files are also available on request. Suggestions for new designs are welcome. Meanwhile, these are the links for becoming a Sponsor or making a Donation.
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BBVMTA NEWS
(Burlington Branch of the Vermont Music Teacher's Association)
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On January 28, the BBVMTA presented the 14th biennial Monster Concert at Trinity
Baptist Church in Williston. 84 piano and 6 flute students participated. Students
participating were from the studios of : Patricia Bergeron, Edward Darling, Lisa Goodrich, Carleen Graff, Marie Johnson, Laurel Maurer, Emily Mott, Susan Nicholas, Lilly Ramsey and Jina Smith.
The process began in November when applications were due from participants. After parts were assigned, students learned their music with their individual teacher. Then, the first rehearsal was held Friday, January 27. Additional rehearsals were on Saturday, January 28. The finale to the weekend was a concert of piano duets, played on 6 pianos
simultaneously. Premiered at this concert was the Lake Champlain Suite by Wynn-Anne
Rossi that was commissioned by the BBVMTA.
A HUGE Thanks to Ginger Hwalek for rehearsing and conducting the students. These
students learned so much from her.
Thank you to the teachers that participated. The BBVMTA is a wonderful group of dedicated teachers. It’s always wonderful how they all band together to put on a great event.
Here’s looking to 2025!
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Lake Champlain Suite
The Lake Champlain Duet Suite was premiered at the BBVMTA Monster Concert on January 28, 2023. This piece was commissioned by the BBVMTA. It was scheduled to be part of the 2021 concert, but was postponed to the 2023, due to Covid 19. This piece is inspired by our own Lake Champlain. Ideas for the suite came from the Teachers of the BBVMTA and their students.
The composer,
Wynne-Anne Rossi, writes:
Mvt. 1 Wind on the Water
Lake Champlain is one of the largest lakes in North America, bordering Vermont, New York and Quebec, Canada. In 1998, it briefly became one of the Great Lakes. Strong, shifting winds make the lake a popular
destination for people who love to sail. The white sails of the boats are a reminder of the local seagulls that ride the winds of the sky.
Mvt.2 Mystery of the Deep,
According to American folklore, Champ is a mysterious monster who resides in the heart of Lake Champlain. Champ offers occasional sightings for the locals, happily performing for the imagination. The creature looks
similar to a dinosaur, perhaps a Plesiosaur.
Mvt 3 Tides of Revolution
This movement depicts the decisive victory to the Americans over the British in the American
Revolutionary War. This triumph helped persuade the French to recognize American independence and to openly provide military assistance.
If you would like a copy of the Lake Champlain Suite, you may order at your favorite music supplier.
(Rossi/Alfred 00-48672)
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GET INVOLVED WITH YOUR ORGANIZATION!
Volunteers are needed to serve on the VMTA board! We currently need to fill the following positions:
President-Elect, Secretary, Conference Chair, and Certification chair.
Come and join our wonderful group of board members and see how your organization works!
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Click the link below to get all the information regarding the upcoming Spring Festival on March 25, 2023.
The deadline for registration is February 24, 2023.
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Just a reminder to check out MTNA eFestival opportunities!
For more information,
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“Music is the universal language of mankind.”
― Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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Paul Orgel:
Sophia Lu and Laura Zhou-Hackett will perform solo pieces on the Young Musicians Showcase concert, January 24th at noon, at St. Paul’s Cathedral in Burlington
Richard Jiang attended his second summer session playing chamber music at the Kinhaven Music School
Laura Zhou-Hackett was this year’s winner of the Vermont Philharmonic’s Jon Borowicz Scholarship. She will perform with the orchestra on Feb. 11th (Elley Long Center), and Feb. 12th (Barre Opera House).
Miles Glover and, once again, Laura Zhao-Hackett , winners of the Vermont Youth Orchestra’s Concerto Competition, will solo with the orchestra on Feb. 5th, 3:00 PM, at the Flynn Center for the Performing Arts, Burlington. Piano Major Logan Prewitt is the winner of this year’s Concerto Competition at UVM. (Ravel G Major Concerto).
Laura Zhou-Hackett is the winner of this year’s All-State solo auditions in piano.
A personal note: When Seniors Miles Glover and Laura Zhou-Hackett leave for college next year—they're both auditioning to be piano performance majors—my studio will be smallest that’s it’s been in 25 years. I would welcome referrals of motivated intermediate or advanced piano students who love music.
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Elaine Greenfield:
The teaching season has been and continues to be quite active, with private lessons and group sessions, both in-person and over FaceTime and Zoom. Greenfield Piano Associates meets monthly, and in December had a gala gathering of members both in-person and over Zoom. People are studying and joining in with us from as far as Japan, Kansas, California, Massachusetts, Chicago, Maryland, and Florida. It is wonderful how technology has broadened the scope of what can be accomplished in teaching and studying. Best of all, how people in the group are able to share their music and ideas, and support one another although at a great distance. There are live performances broadcast, plus a number of video and audio recordings shared. Regarding performing, I am looking forward to a collaboration in May with Vermont Public radio host, soprano Helen Lyons. Our concert takes place Sunday, May 21, 3:00 pm, St. Paul’s Cathedral, as part of Cathedral Arts series. It is titled “Forgotten Tresasures” and features music by Florence Price, Margaret Bonds, William Grant Still, Pauline Viardot Garcia, and Lili Boulanger. Poets of the pieces include Edna St. Vincent Millay, Langston Hughes, and Robert Frost. Promotion of my recent Ravel recording “Ravel Compared” continues with upcoming performances in MA, Maine, Syracuse, and at the Adamant Music School in July.
Happy teaching!
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VMTA Website: vermontmta.net |
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Sponsors
Abby Halpin
Forte Performance & Physical Therapy, PLC
Physical Therapist, Coach
PO Box 31, Jericho VT 05465
206-201-1793
Allan H. Day, R.P.T. Piano Service
8 Lincoln Road
Williston, VT 05495
(802) 879-4338
pianomanday@comcast.net
http://www.pianomanday.com
Ellis Music
PO Box 437-Route 107
Bethel, VT 05032
(802)-234-6400
ellismusic.com
Geoghegan Company
Michael Geoghegan, owner
396 Howes Rd.
Moretown, VT 05660
802-272-4005
www.geoghegancompany.com
Rose Kinnick Piano Service
Roselyn Kinnick, RPT
802-598-3385
www.rosespiano.com
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