The Studio Holiday Music Party was a success! Right before Christmas, twenty students and their families packed our house for the 11th Annual Holiday Music Party. During this event students play their Christmas and Chanukah music while everyone sings and hums along, as well as playing drums, shaking jingle bells, and otherwise reacting to the music in any old way! To hear some of the playing at the Party, please visit the Student Recordings page. The food part of the festivities this year was accented by the first appearance of a chocolate fountain—an unqualified hit!

The new studio Sightplaying Program is in place! Students who have played longer than two years are now participating in the new Sightplaying Program. The goal is to help players improve their sight-reading abilities in a natural and fun way. Students are initially assigned a "color" based on their current reading level, and then they sightplay through entire books of music at that level for ten minutes a day. They get to choose different books from a carousel located in the waiting room:

After they have successfully read 100 pages at their color level, they get tested to see if they can graduate to the next color. In the process of this, they get to play music of many different styles and composers. I have based this program on the one designed by Dr. Susanne Baker, a friend and colleague who is the Director of the Community Music Division of DePaul University in Chicago. It has been a rousing success there since its inception, and I look forward to the same great results here in my studio!

The Sightplaying Library carousel