The Winter Repertoire Challenge is ideal for players of all ages, and offers a great opportunity for developing your Active Repertoire at the piano. Are you up for it?
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Mike Cornick’s ‘Six Jazz Piano Solos’
Mike Cornick has established a reputation as one of our leading composers of jazz piano music. Many of his previous works have been particularly warmly received in an educational context, with compositions such as his Blues in Two, Modulations and In the Groove featured in exam syllabi worldwide.
Mike’s enormous output includes more than sixty piano publications, brought to us by Universal Edition, the latest of which is his Six Jazz Piano Solos, written are written “for intermediate-level players and beyond”.
The collection comprises new, original piano solos which are around UK Grade 4-6 level. Each miniature explores different characteristics of jazz piano playing and style, and together they make a welcome addition to the repertoire for players at this level.
What Can You Play?
One of the major stumbling blocks for players is that we too often feel that we are struggling, making little progress, and perhaps just haven’t got what it takes to become a “good player” (however we define what that even is!).
To enjoy playing an instrument, we need to move beyond this negative self-talk. And I suggest that one of the most easy and powerful ways we can all achieve this is to adjust the balance between working and playing during our personal piano time.
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Rendezvous with Midnight
Regular readers here may remember the positive reviews that I have given to composer Barbara Arens’ recent publications 21 Amazingly Easy Pieces and Piano Misterioso, and it gives me great pleasure to be the first to review her latest publication Rendezvous with Midnight, brought to us by independent publisher Editions Musica Ferrum.
I first heard about this collection several months ago, at which point Barbara was looking for a publisher for it – I had no hesitation in recommending she approach Nikolas Sideris of Editions Musica Ferrum, believing that they would make an exciting creative partnership. So when I learnt that they had indeed teamed up I was delighted – and even more so now that the results are in my hand – a genuinely brilliant publication.
