Your Active Repertoire is at the heart of your piano journey.
The annual Active Repertoire Challenge aims to encourage piano players from around the world to develop their own Active Repertoire of three pieces which can be played any time, any place:
- Without Notice
- Without Notation
- and Without Embarrassment
The Active Repertoire concept is modelled on the goals and practices of successful performers worldwide, and built on the fundamental pedagogic values espoused by educators from Suzuki to the present day.
Crucially, the annual challenge offers an approach which aims to foster a lifelong love of music by developing intrinsic motivation, rather than the extrinsic motivation that underpins grades, competitions and tick-box progress sheets.
Are you ready to take part?
In that case, head straight to the GETTING STARTED GUIDE from where you can download your FREE Printable Active Repertoire Sheet.
And for further background information, check out these articles:
You can access Andrew’s personal support at the piano using his
Video Feedback Service or by Booking a Consultation at his studio.
His book How to Practise Music is also packed with helpful advice.
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Awesome! Thank you!
Brilliant! So nice to know I´m not the only one who sees a tempting piano somewhere, but is lost without music books! I am going to do this!
I love this idea – so simple. Perhaps the most valuable off-shoot will be the *gentle* facility to develop memorisation. Unless one is fortunately blessed with natural memorisation skills (and I’m not talking about young children here), and especially if you are older and have never memorised, like myself – it is very difficult to start. I have spent many years trying to ‘memorise’ with no real success and I think my big mistake was in trying to memorise major repertoire and not starting small – and so I ended giving up. Perhaps the brain needs to develop slowly here, just like everything else and there is no quick fix, but like anything, if you do something a lot, you get good at it. I am going to start with my own pieces (easy ones!) and build from there. I have memorised one of them for some talks I am giving and am amazed at how much easier it is to play from memory. That’s just for me – but what a gift for my pupils for whom it is much more important . . .
All my students do this anyway. I call them “Great Aunt Agatha pieces “. The idea is that when their GAA comes to tea (don’t be silly; EVERYBODY has a GAA) she will be so overwhelmed by their wonderful ability that when she dies she will leave them her immense fortune. And then they will remember their piano teacher. With 75 students, it’s my foolproof pension scheme!
Haha! What a great plan 😉
I find it hard to keep long term track of what students have in their living repertoire list. I have tried adding the pieces to a separate folder, also sticking the list into their current book etc. but none of these actually work long term. I try to make it a special list , because for me it is a really important list because it will be with them for the rest of their lives. How do other teachers work it
Such a good idea! I’d recommend it for every pianist, young and old.