Earlier this year, I reread Cal Newport's Slow Productivity: The Lost Art of Accomplishment Without Burnout.

One of the things I really enjoy about Cal’s books is how well-researched they are. The three principles he outlines in this book are informed and enriched by writings, studies, and historical insights.

Cal addresses two main questions in this book: 1) How do we accomplish meaningful work without burnout? and 2) Can we take a slow approach to productivity?

I started using Piano Safari in my studio five years ago. There are a lot of things I like about the curriculum and pedagogical approach—the emphasis on rote teaching and pattern-based learning, creative exploration and improvisation, an intervallic approach to reading, and repertoire that is expressive and captivating for young learners—but one of my favorite resources is their correlated sight-reading cards.

In this episode, I’ll share my 7-step teaching process for using these cards in lessons with elementary and early-intermediate students, and 24 creative ways to incorporate them into your teaching.

Assessment is a process of measuring, evaluating, and documenting learning.

This informs our teaching, curriculum planning, and repertoire choices. In turn, it also helps students develop a diverse set of musicianship skills, including technique, performance, aural skills, sight-reading, and musical creativity.

In this episode, we’ll talk about how to plan an assessment for your studio, including defining assessment criteria and choosing measurement tools, and how to use this data to motivate your students and inform your teaching.

I love doing listening projects in my studio classes. These leveled, small-group, hour-long classes are offered 5-6 times per year, with 3-5 students per group. I always include a performance element and plan several themed activities spanning technique, sight-reading, rhythm, improvisation and composition, and listening.

In a recent class with three intermediate students (8th-11th grade), we compared the music of Franz Schubert and Max Richter.

What does it look like to be a musician who is also an inventor—someone whose curiosity about how things work shapes the way he approaches his instrument? Pianist Josef Hofmann spent his entire career exploring that, and his story is worth knowing.

This year marks the 150th anniversary of Hofmann's birth. He was a Polish-American pianist, born in 1876, and considered by many—including Sergei Rachmaninoff—to be the greatest pianist of the 20th century. And yet, despite his many musical achievements, including a fifty-year performing career, 100 compositions, commercial recordings, a signature tone, and enviable technical precision, he doesn't have the same name recognition as his contemporaries.