Music for the Community

Welcome to our Music for the Community page! Since we can't take our music out to local nursing homes and libraries at the moment, we're inviting you in to enjoy it here instead. Each day you'll find a new student performance on this page, along with some info about the composer or instrument - and sometimes words too so you can sing along.

If you're interested in a particular category, you can sort performances by student age, instrument, singalong music, composer and so on - click on the orange tags under the text. We hope you and your family will enjoy watching our students share their music!

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Displaying items by tag: Piano

Monday, April 13 2020 00:00

Day 6: “Tick Tock the Jazz Clock” by Bill Boyd

Pianist age 9 plays “Tick Tock the Jazz Clock” by Bill Boyd

Jazz music started in the African American communities of New Orleans in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and by the 1920s had taken America by storm. It’s continued to take new and interesting forms since then. Try searching on bebop, cool jazz, jazz-rock fusion, Latin and Afro-Cuban jazz – you’ll all kinds of great listening!

Jazz has a great swing to it because many of the notes come a little before or after the main beats. That may sound complicated - but this fun duet is easy to play! Listen to how the student plays the “tick tock” part, making a beat for the teacher’s music to dance around.

Published in Music For Community

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Day 2: Toccatina by Kabalevsky

Pianist age 11 plays Toccatina by Kabalevsky

Russian composer Dimitry Kabalevsky lived from 1904 – 1987. His father was a mathematician and wanted him to be one too, but he was drawn very strongly to music. He wrote symphonies, concertos, operas, ballets, chamber works, songs, theatre, film scores, and many popular pieces. During the 1930s, as movies began to have sound, he wrote film music too.

But his biggest contribution to the world of music-making was his music for children. When working as a piano teacher he felt that there wasn’t enough good music for children learning piano. So he set out to write easy music that had appropriate technical challenges for students, but at the same time would be interesting and help develop children’s musical sensitivity. This Toccatina is one of those pieces.