Playing the piano is a lifetime journey – and hopefully an important part of our bigger journey through life.
The Way of Piano blog posts explore this journey in depth, covering a wide and sometimes discursive range of topics, with contributions from pianists and teachers from around the world.
Playing • Teaching • Living
We pianists know that self-evaluation is crucial to our progress and musical development. Pianodao takes this basic principle and places the process of reflection within a much broader context – our journey through life.
Many of the problems and issues that we grapple with have very little to do with our pianism and musical understanding, and far more to do with our physical limitations, tension, mental state and internal beliefs. The work of a piano teacher can sometimes have as much to do with helping students to address these issues as it does with conventional pedagogical content.
We all have a life outside of our piano playing, and it is clearly worthwhile considering the connections between our experience of life and our ongoing musical development. But where do we start?
I have found that the philosophical wisdom of Daoism (“Taoism”) and other Eastern traditions can offer fresh perspectives and an insightful approach – one which celebrates inter-connectedness in all things, rather than isolating disconnected specialisms as so often happens in Western thinking.
These themes are explored by following these “pathways” through the site:
I hope you will find plenty that interests, inspires and challenges you, as well as the support here that you are looking for.
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