40 Piece Challenge Finish Line!
2015 40 Piece Challenge Finish Line!
How do I feel about making it to the 40 Piece Challenge finish line?? Whew! I have to admit I have mixed feelings about it…
- Feeling of relief: Can’t believe it’s done!
- Feeling of regret: Wish I had more time to refine, or include other songs
- Feeling of loss: After so many weeks of working feverishly on personal practice, what do I do with all this spare time?! What should my next project be?
- Feeling of accomplishment: I stuck with it!
My cousin (she’s a doctor) pointed out that 8 months of work is about how long it takes for a human to grow a baby. Well, it certainly was a labour of sorts.
40 Piece Challenge Finish Line: The songs
When I started the 40 Piece Challenge in October of 2015 I only had a vague idea of what I would include in my personal challenge and the May deadline (later extended to June) seemed far away. By my calculations, putting up a video every week would get me to the deadline. These are the pieces that I completed, recorded, and uploaded to YouTube for the 40 Piece Challenge finish:
- Over the Rainbow – arranged by Keith Jarrett
- Kiss the Rain – Yiruma
- Root Beer Rag – Billy Joel
- Happy Time Jazz – Martha Mier
- Fantasy Bossa – Christopher Norton
- Waltz – Viktor Kosenko
- Jazz Exercise No. 2 – Oscar Peterson
- Jazz Suite No. 2, Third Movement – Glenda Austin
- Far Away Friend – Mark Springer
- Seven of Hearts – Kevin Olson
- Shooting Stars in Summer – Nakao Ikeda
- Fuga in a moll con Angry Birds Thema – Piotr Tomasz Harasimiuk
- The Christmas Song – arranged by Vince Guaraldi
- The Shepherds’ Cradle Song – arranged by Sally Deford
- I Should Care – Sammy Cahn, Axel Stordahl, and Paul Weston
- Theme from Schindler’s List – John Williams
- A Wink and a Smile – Harry Connick, Jr.
- Katherine – Stephen Chatman
- Audley’s Castle – June Armstrong
- Ottawa Valley Song – Court Stone
- Solfeggietto – Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach
- The Gentle Waltz – Oscar Peterson
- Every Heart from Inuyasha – arranged by Kyle Landry
- Sneaky – Stephen Chatman
- Souvenir – Genari Karganov
- Petites Litanies de Jesus – Gabriel Grovlez
- Jazz Exercise No. 3 – Oscar Peterson
- Mysterious Summer’s Night – Larysa Kuzmenko
- Castle Ward Temple Dancer in Blue – June Armstrong
- Etude Allegro – Yoshinao Nakada
- Milonga del Angel – Astor Piazzolla
- Interlude III – Rami Bar-Niv
- Decadent Sentimental Song – Miguel Manzano
- Reverie in F Minor – Dennis Alexander
- Carnivalse – Chilly Gonzales
- Old-Adam – William Bolcom
- October (Autumn Song, Op. 37b, No. 10) – Pyotr Il’yich Tchaikovsky
- Pas de Deux – Samuel Barber
- Cancion y Danza VI – Federico Mompou
- Indigo Moon – Elissa Milne
Choosing the Pieces for the 40 Piece Challenge
Like I said, I didn’t start out with an overall plan in mind. I had a vague idea to explore Royal Conservatory of Music repertoire. They recently published their edition of the 2015 Celebration Series. The new books include a huge amount of new repertoire, including a revamp of their contemporary selections, including many new pieces by living composers. I was excited to get my hands on these new books!
I also chose to include many Canadian composers: Oscar Peterson, Chilly Gonzales, Court Stone, and Stephen Chatman. Since this 40 Piece Challenge involved my colleagues from other countries, there was a great opportunity to introduce some of my favourite local composers to them.
I also wanted to explore jazz repertoire. For a mainly classical player, the jazz idiom has exciting new complex harmonies that my ear and fingers were not as familiar with. They were a challenge to play and learn for me, but I enjoyed them immensely!
The 40 Piece Challenge also gave me an opportunity to explore some of my facebook friends’ compositions. June Armstrong and Rami Bar-Niv kindly contributed some new music for me to learn and I enjoyed getting to know their compositions. I also studied Elissa Milne’s Pepperbox Series and included her piece ‘Indigo Moon’ as my last choice. After all, she kind of got us into this by inventing the idea of the 40 Piece Challenge in the first place!
Now and then, my students would also suggest pieces. I included Every Heart from Inuyasha for my teen students that love anime, Yiruma for every student that has ever wanted to learn his music, and Billy Joel for the students that didn’t know he wrote something other than ‘Piano Man’.
I tried to choose pieces and composers that presented something new for me to learn and that would also add new techniques to my piano ‘toolbox’. I played songs that used double thirds, complex jazz chords, multi-voice compositions, fast passages, required improv/composition skills, stride bass, rubato, mini-cadenzas and octave work among others.
Overall, the view from the 40 Piece Challenge finish line is a satisfactory one. I am pleased with the choices and the variety gives you a glimpse into what happens in a year of my musical life, aside from my collaborative piano efforts, choir accompaniment, or church music.
Saying ‘yes’ to the 40 Piece Challenge
It wasn’t like I didn’t have enough on my plate that I needed to add daily personal practice to my already overloaded teaching schedule and life! Why would I (in an admittedly insane moment) say ‘yes’ to doing the 40 Piece Challenge? And why post the songs publicly?
In addition to a full schedule of teaching students (40-50 on average this year), I have three children, a dog, a website, articles to write, busy church work and plenty of reasons to say “no” to the challenge. So why say ‘yes’ indeed?!
I have always been a big believer in reading tons of repertoire. So much of music is pattern recognition–the more you expose yourself to different patterns and different styles of music, the better your playing will be. How else do you teach students if you don’t perform yourself?! The act of learning, refining, honing, interpreting, and being ‘in the trenches’ made me a better teacher. I can’t count the number of times that I put up a video and that very same week had a student ask me about a technique that I needed to learn myself for that very song.
It also means that students have very little excuse for not practicing. If I can make it week after week through dental surgery, funerals, marriages, car accidents, shoulder injuries, migraines, heat waves, and, let’s face it, LIFE, well then you’d better have a darned good excuse for not practicing. HAH!
Putting them on YouTube made me accountable. It forced me to learn the songs a tiny bit better. Recording yourself allows you to really listen to what you are producing and helps you to cement your interpretation choices. And I wanted proof that I’ve played these pieces. I have learned a ton of music in my lifetime and I don’t have many recordings of my piano playing. Until now.
I made it to the 40 Piece Challenge Finish Line! What did I learn?
- Just do it.
- Make it a habit.
- Turn off the ringer and disconnect the doorbell.
- There is never a perfect take.
- Celebrate the milestones. But remember the journey is just as important.
- There are a lot of great composers and great music waiting to be discovered out there.
- You never stop learning.
- You are never too old to begin again.
- Be humble. There is always a video of some ten-year-old whiz kid who can play it better than you can.
- Do it anyway.
Would I Do the Challenge Again?
After making it to the 40 Piece Challenge finish line, you are probably wondering: would I do it again? MOST DEFINITELY. I truly believe that teachers are better when they are committed to learning. Teaching has stretched me in ways I didn’t think possible. And performing has stretched me further. Knowing how to perform, analyzing our own performances, breaking down pieces into manageable chunks, and studying our own music is immensely satisfying. Learning them and then teaching them to others makes us better musicians.
Doing the 40 Piece Challenge has reminded me of how important music is in my life. I have reconnected with my past, practicing self. I admit that in the last few years, I didn’t often learn new music, aside from what I was teaching my students, or when required to accompany someone or play at church. I never realized that I had stopped practicing–Music has always been a mainstay in my life–something that got me through tough times, something that brought me joy, and something I’ve always enjoyed doing. I never had problems with practising before. I remember a former duet partner’s Mom asked me: “How much do you practice?” To which I responded: “I don’t know exactly. I just practice until it’s done.”
I can look back on what I have accomplished and remember why I became a musician in the first place. Finishing the 40 piece challenge reconnected me with the joy I experienced when I was practicing my craft daily. I love learning new music and I love having goals and purpose.
What’s the first thing that I read after making it to the 40 Piece Challenge finish line? There’s going to be another one in September! Will I be there? YES! Come join me.
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