Fitting the Arts Into Your Life

Many of those I’ve met in the profession with long, meaningful careers have had one thing in common: their careers don’t look typical. You’ve got to prioritize life because there’s no guarantee that success will necessarily pan out in the long term, and even when it does, it frequently doesn’t look like what you initially envisioned it to be.

Laura Strickling talks about her own experience, and how building a career on your own rules rather than those of others might not look traditional, but ensures that you live life on your own terms rather than those of others.

See also:

• What Success Looks Like

• Experiments in Rejection and Failure

• Musicians Should Learn Career Skills Just Like They Learn Music

7 Articles I've Written About Memorizing Music

Yesterday in a lesson one of my students got stuck with memory in one of her pieces. She asked me what I had previously written about memory because she once saw something about it in 31 Days to Better Practicing.

A quick search reveals that I've actually written a lot more about memory. Here are some articles I've written from The Collaborative Piano Blog over the last few decades (has it been that long?):

1. 30+1 Ways to Help You Memorize Music Flawlessly - Written in 2007 and still one of the most-read articles on the blog, this was a compendium of ways to fit memory into the bigger picture. There are a lot of links here to articles from early days of the web, some of which are still working. 

2. Memory as an Emotional Place - How to use a series of questions to build emotional resonance with what you're playing. 

3. 5 Reasons to Memorize Music: The Why of memory is important to understand. What resonated with the student I showed to last night was the final reason - to stop thinking like a student and start thinking like an artist.

4. Talking About Memory - The most recent article from 2023 looks at Angela Hewitt's article in the Guardian about how she keeps her memory in shape.

5. Memorizing for Adults - Some thoughts on the challenges of memorizing music as an adult, at the same time that other processing-related skills such as sight reading become considerably easier. 

6. 3 Ways to Memorize Music When Nothing Else Works - Many of us just get plain stuck when memorizing. Here are some ways to deepen your understanding of the music to get over that hump. 

7. 15 Ways to Add 10-minute Practice Blocks to Your Routine - Even back in 2007 I noticed that many of my students were overwhelmed and didn't always have as much time to practice as they would like (the problem has only become worse in the last 20 years). Reviewing memory in short bursts throughout the day is a useful way to integrate what you've already worked through in previous longer sessions. 

Finding a Centre of Gravity

Life was so much easier when we felt we were at the end of history and the world could be predictably smooth sailing. But history is back and many of us are struggling with how to process the fast pace of events and discover alternate ways of visualizing our media habits.

Oliver Burkeman suggests another way: by focusing on what is directly in front of us. From the latest issue of The Imperfectionist:

But there’s one piece of advice I’m confident applies to basically everyone: as far as you can manage it, you should make sure your psychological centre of gravity is in your real and immediate world – the world of your family and friends and neighborhood, your work and your creative projects, as opposed to the world of presidencies and governments, social forces and global emergencies.

This will make you happier. It will make you more meaningfully productive. And to whatever extent it falls to you to be an active citizen – to be engaged in politics, say, or in otherwise addressing world events – it’ll make you better at that, too. There really is no downside.

How we can do this:

And, yes, returning your centre of gravity to your immediate world means doing all those things you already know you ought to be doing – removing news notifications from your phone; spending time in nature; considering a return to printed news, and so on. But it also means remembering that “the way you want the world to be” is something you can live, here and now, not just something for which you advocate or argue. Your immediate world isn’t only somewhere you come to recharge, before heading back to the arena. It is the arena.

I mean, step back for one moment and consider the absolute outrageousness of the idea that focusing on the concretely real in this way – on looking people in the eye or walking in the woods, on building organisations or solving problems, on bringing creative works into the world or paying attention to your kids – that any of this somehow automatically constitutes “retreating” or “disengaging” or “looking away” from reality! Only someone who had completely taken up residence inside the news could possibly believe that (which is presumably why it’s mainly political commentators who seem to do so).

If only the weather in Toronto wasn’t so miserable this time of year.

(Image courtesy of Cosmic Timetraveler on Unsplash)

What Success Looks Like

Many of my musician colleagues bristle at the suggestion that they should think of themselves as entrepreneurs. The fact remains that each of us is responsible for our own careers and the direction that it takes, and it can be a hard road at the best of times.

According to Nicole’s Everything You’ve Been Told About Success is a Lie addresses the challenge and promises of a life as an entrepreneur, and how success is often not what we’re told it is:

Success to an entrepreneur is simply the ability to keep doing whatever you’re doing. Every single day that i wake up and don’t have to look for another job, I am successful.…And I think this is especially true for anybody who works in a creative field like music, or photography, or filmmaking, or content creation, but really it applies to all business owners. Success is not being in a certain tax brecket. It’s being able to do whatever you want.

(Photo courtesy of Artur Aldyrkhanov on Unsplash)

Carlos Rojas Rodriguez Plays the Paganini-Liszt Etude No. 6

Here’s a video of my student Carlos Rojas Rodriguez playing the Etude No. 6 from Franz Liszt’s Grande études de Paganini at The Royal Conservatory’s Mazzoleni Hall a few months ago (don’t shoot the videographer; it was me):

This Sunday you can see Carlos performing the Canadian premiere of Manuel Ponce’s Balade mexicana (fusión versiones orquestal y dos pianos) at 5pm in The Royal Conservatory’s Mazzoleni Hall.

More vs. Less Valuable Traits

What are the traits that are becoming more valuable vs. those that are losing value? Quarter--Mile looks at this question and comes up with some personal qualities that are becoming less valuable, including being skinny, traditional intelligence, and manual dexterity. 

QM's traits that are gaining in value include trustworthiness, developing a real audience, doing things in real life, learning crafts, specialization, humor, mental health, resourcefulness, creativity, taste, adaptability, and kindness. 

To this list I would add:

• Being able to navigate news and social media without overwhelm or burnout. The pace and stakes of public life have taken a noticeable turn in early 2025. Most people I know are having difficulty adjusting to what's happening in the world and need to relearn how they engage with news and social media. Those who learn to balance the real with the digital layer of reality might have an advantage, espeically in light of the rising value of trustworthiness and mental health.

What traits do you see going up or down in value?

(Image courtesy of Lina Trochez)

Sleem is Whine Problem's Debut EP

My former student Emrys Bourdeau is a member of Whine Problem, a London-based punk band who just released Sleem, their debut EP. You can play the tracks from Bandcamp below; you can also find it on Apple Music and Spotify.

There’s a lot to love on this EP. Whine Problem play exceptionally well together and there’s an unmistakable groove with all their songs. They’re young. They’re angry as hell. The songwriting is consistent all the way through. Some people will be offended at their lyrics. In short, Whine Problem has exactly what has been lost with rock and roll, and what it needs to regain once again.

Whine Problem are:

• Vocals - Hunter Stull

• Vocals/Guitar - Lee Fidler

• Vocals/Bass - Emrys Bourdeau

• Vocals/Drums - Cora Robison

Sleem was produced by Alden Wiebe and mastered by Josh Matos.

Our New Studio Website

I've been using My Music Staff since 2015 and it has revolutionized a lot of my studio processes, from having a strong studio website to online registration, invoicing, scheduling, lesson notes, and repertoire management. After MMS launched their new website editor in 2024, I initially hesittated to use it since our studio was handling a record intake of new students and a full schedule.

But after I received an email that the old website editor would be sunsetted in mid 2025, I decided now was the time. The transition was smooth for the most part and I mostly transferred over the same pics and text with a few small changes. The new templates have a simplicity to them and render well on mobile, where probably over half the page views are going to happen.

Here’s a link to our new teaching website. You can also take a look at the old design on the Wayback Machine.

Previously on The Collaborative Piano Blog: You Need a Website for Your Teaching Studio. Here’s Why.

The 1898 Toronto Conservatory of Music Annual Calendar

This is an article in draft that I found on my Drafts dashboard that I originally (mostly) wrote well over two years ago but never published. Although I did post the photos on Facebook, I never posted them here. This is a strength of blogging that’s difficult to duplicate in social media - finding things from previous years.

—————

Back in November 2022, Wendy and I met up with The Royal Conservatory’s Chief Examiner Emeritus Tom Green to visit the Toronto Old Paper and Book show. One of my side quests in the last while has been tracking down old Royal Conservatory materials - I’ve got a 1918 Technical Requirements manual as well as syllabi from 1925, 1926, and 1927. These old documents can be hard to come by, so the OPB show was one of the only places where one might find, by chance, one of these relics of Toronto’s musical life of yesteryear.

And I hit the jackpot, finding an 1898 annual calendar from the Toronto Conservatory of Music, the former operating name of The Royal Conservatory. This was the annual prospectus given out to the community that showcased photos of the TCM’s new digs at the SW corner of College and University in downtown Toronto (now the site of the Ontario Power Generation building), information about course registration, a listing of faculty and their rates, highlights from the annual meeting, as well as a complete listing of recent graduates.

Here are some interesting things about the old conservatory building, some of which I gleaned from the calendar and some from elsewhere:

• The old Toronto Conservatory building was right across the street from the Ward, Toronto’s first multicultural neighborhood. Immigrants from many communities first settled here in Toronto, and the conservatory was a readily accessible cultural institution where they could learn both music and speech arts.

• At the corner of University Avenue and College Street, the building was easily accessible via streetcar, and after 1963 by subway - the Queen’s Park TTC station was right by the building.

• In the absence of central heating, studios and practice rooms were heated by fireplace.

• The Conservatory Music Hall was one of Toronto’s lost musical treasures, and featured an electric Casavant organ.

• Private lessons with Edward Fisher were $40 a term, consisting of a term of 10 thirty-minute lessons. With the rate of inflation calculated from 1914, that is now the equivalent of at least $1075.33, or more than $100 per half-hour lesson, over $200 per hour in current dollars allowing for inflation. By way of contrast, lessons with Edith Crittenden would have cost a much more reasonable $21.50 per lesson.

Here’s a question from the June 1898 history exam that I found to be quite challenging for our 21st-century sensibilities:

Write a short life of that great master who was born in Germany last century, and who died in England this century.

Which composer was this? Bear in mind the date of the history exam and leave your answers in the comments.

Stay Sane With Outcome Orientation Rather than an Information Diet

Navigating the accelerating rate of information that is constantly thrown at us is one of the evolving challenges that every one of us are navigating. Add to the mix the new regime in Washington and its information/disinformation compaigns coupled with algorithmic feeds and AI-generated content makes the need to process information more important than ever.

Cedric Chin frames the challenge as Outcome Orientation, and he does it by asking a simple question:

“What is the outcome I am trying to achieve here?”

Outcome Orientation differs from the Information Diet in that rather than curtailing your information sources in order to consume them in a safer manner, you expose yourself to the full range of internet sources, but ask yourself for which goal you are consuming it first:

You may then continue with the action or consumption if you wish, but you must answer the question honestly first.

That’s it. The point is not to control your time allocation, the point is to always be aware of why you are consuming something as you are consuming it. If you do this, you will automatically change your time allocation as a result.

This approach might just work, as it frames the indiviaul as having agency over their environment, both in terms of the sometimes competing realms of self-interest and consequentialism, rather than being the victim of information overload with its related costs.