piano
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What the World Needs Now — Wookie video
Wookie LOVES being on my lap at the piano. This is so nice to do. It really might become a regular feature. Of course I can’t play much, but really, who cares? Wookie will end up taking requests I bet. 🐾 Continue reading
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Chopin’s Nocturne in E Flat, for Bojan — YouTube
Recently, Roaring Lion’s new drummer Bojan said he loves Chopin nocturnes. So I’m in the school music studio, and I’ve got a gap. Here you go Bojan, Nocturne in E flat. Continue reading
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Love in the mistakes
I am learning the Debussy piece and thinking of a memory posted on Facebook a while ago by my friend Ann. She recalled going to sleep each night as a child, listening to her mother play their piano. Ann said her mother always played one song. There was a difficult part near the end and… Continue reading
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Adding the bridge to Ode To Joy
Last week M’s lesson was the first part of Ode To Joy – described in Ode To Joy For My Special Girl which she played with her preferred left hand. She was really pleased about it! Today’s she is getting the middle bit. I drew lavender to show it’s different, before returning to the main… Continue reading
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Ode To Joy for my special girl
I drew something for my special girl M. She needs really big notation without manuscript lines and we’ve already gone through a few Primer level books, so I’ve been drawing notation for her with watercolour pencils. I ask her about her life and then use her words to make a song about her breakfast or… Continue reading
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Reshaping the hammers of my Beale piano
I started to learn piano when I was six, and we lived in London. When I was seven we moved, and the lessons stopped. There was a gap until we settled in Hampshire. The third piece of big furniture my mother bought, after beds and a dining set, was a second-hand upright piano for me.… Continue reading
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Teaching In The Scenic Rim
When I first arrived in Australia, watching television was an obvious way to learn about life here. I loved Landline, with all its moving stories about rural life, entrepreneurship and survival. As I become a piano teacher in the Scenic Rim, I feel very privileged to be stepping into this world, albeit in an oblique… Continue reading
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I bought a Beale piano!
In April, I bought an upright piano! After moving around the world for decades with different digital pianos, I’m finally settled enough to own this big old, magical wooden box with 1,200 moving parts. Now, I am home. I drove all over Brisbane and the Gold Coast checking out pianos advertised on Gumtree. When I… Continue reading
About Joanna
Joanna is British Australian. She worked mainly in financial news in London. In her forties she moved to her parents’ birthplace, Sabah, a Malaysian state on the island of Borneo, where she became a pianist in a hotel and wrote a blog about musicians. The blog became a book before Joanna came to Australia in 2012. In this blog she writes mostly about music, gardening, and trips to Sabah. Oh, and Wookie the Havanese.
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