This upcoming Saturday, August 1st, I will be talking with and performing for the COMBAS, Conservatorio de Música y Bellas Artes del Sur, in the context of their music festival, COMFEST.

We will be, along with Jean Paul Harb, discussing Sonatas and Partitas, and afterwards I will be performing Bach C minor Partita, and Beethoven op.13.  You are welcome to check it out in the following link 

​Tema: Conversatorio/Concierto Formas: partita y sonata con Claudio Espejo "COMFEST Online" Hora: 1 ago 2020 03:00 PM Santiago
Unirse a la reunión Zoom https://us02web.zoom.us/j/85973690337?pwd=WFBIWGlpM2VjTkUvczJHQzF2SkowUT09
ID de reunión: 859 7369 0337 Código de acceso: comfest

The fact that piano lessons have fully moved online has pushed me to take a closer look at the materials that I offer to my students, as well as to the materials offered by my colleagues. 

The next few are practices that I am tweaking.

Entry Interview 
This interview used to take care of the basics: age, musical background. 
Nowadays is also an opportunity to ask questions about musical interests, motivations, and goals. This last bit helps me clarify what is my role here: educator, motivator, practice coach,etc. In this way, the interview helps to set a route forward and create some guidelines together with the student. 

Develop technical material through videos. 
I am fond of teaching technique as in dealing with sound production, muscle tension, troubleshooting passages. However, I am not incredibly fond of teaching technique as repeating x fingerings/note names for a given scale/arpeggio/skill. In order to be that happier teacher that deals with subtler musical aspects, I am in the process of creating and compiling a library of materials that could be learned at home. 

Grid that categorizes payments.
This was suggested by the infinite wisdom of my wife. As she overheard a conversation in which I struggled to determine a price tag for my lessons, she suggested I create a grid I can share with parents/students wishing to sign up. In the process of creating this grid I became aware of a few issues. 
First, I was trying to give the same experience of piano+theory+mindfulness+movement to both the students signing up for thirty minutes and to those signing up for an hour. The truth is that time is the value I give, and in order to make the experience enjoyable on both ends, I need to be realistic about what can get accomplished in thirty minutes. 
Secondly, in doing this grid I was reminded of the amount of work that I do in preparation for lessons, and which I sometimes forget when the question of payment arises.

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At its core, igniting creativity has to do with putting in place a scaffolding for a voice to flourish. The elements that I am always circling, in my teaching and practice, are play, movement, improvisation, composition, and wellness. In the following weeks I will write about each one of these.
Play
A friend and mentor, Carlos Lloró (Professor at Catholic University of Temuco, Literature and Guitar) introduced me to four types of games: Alea, Agon, Mimicry, and Ilinx.


In aleatoric games, some or most elements are left to chance. In a basic sense, while structure is necessary for a music lesson, breaking that structure brings excitement. In a more specific sense, dice or spinning wheels bring dynamism to what maybe otherwise a simple set of categories. An old and extremely refined form of musical aleatoric game is Mozart’s Musical Dice Game.


Competitive games (Agon) allows us to improve together, like a blade sharpens another. In private lessons the student can be asked to compete with themselves, but of course the more ideal circumstance for this is a group lesson. Through different forms of competition, their attention becomes more focused, as competition raises the stakes.


Mimicry as a game category has to do with role playing, or impersonating a character. In a broader context it is also the use of created narratives
with a purpose. As an example of this category, teacher and student can create a story for a piano piece or impersonate characters to express a specific mood of the piece.
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Ilinx, or playing with the senses can illuminate many aspects of music by narrowing our attention at a determined moment. Two fun and useful techniques are: playing with eyes closed and ghost playing, not pressing down the keys.


A project that I would love to undertake with a fellow piano teacher is taking a look at different apps and games from pianimation.com, in order to categorize them and begin understanding when should one use each category. Let me know what you think!

During the week of January 13th until the 19th, 2020, I spent a week in Puerto Varas, at COMBAS, which stands for Southern Conservatory of Music and Fine Arts. There, I had a chance to be exposed to a different form of piano pedagogy, and certain practices that I certainly want to incorporate into my teaching studio.

The importance of beautiful surroundings

When the project started, the COMBAS team spent months painting the school, so the environment would be inviting and stimulating. The colorful walls and spacious rooms carry energy that positively feeds into the learning that occurs there.  

Challenging repertoire that points towards the next level

This past semester (September through December), I started a lot of beginner students in a variety of methods that provide the basis of musicianship at the piano. As a “good student”, I value the idea of providing as many steps into the learning process in order to avoid holes. Yet, this past semester I have been feeling a bit stuck in giving many of my beginner students only repertoire found in their method books.
At the COMBAS, a student in their first day of piano lessons already learned a brief song by rote, so from the beginning, repertoire served the purpose of challenging and inspiring more learning.

Daily performances

Towards the end of each day of the festival, we would gather around the piano to hear the progress of each piano student. No matter if they only got to practice and refine one line of a piece, they would stand up, announce the piece, perform that line as if it were an entire piece, and bow as they stepped away from the piano. The vital lesson that I learned through this exercise is that performing is a practice in itself, one that can be done regardless of whether a piece is fully memorized or only partially. To an extent, performing their music at the end of each day reaffirmed for each student the importance of the work they were doing, knowing that each day their work would be visible.

Favorite activity

At the end of each day, we gathered in a circle and name our favorite activity of the day, which allowed for each student to reflect on what they learned, and what others learned. This practice was akin to asking each student: what did you learn?, yet it felt more organic and enjoyable.

Weekly joke

After saying their favorite activity, each student had to tell a joke to the group. While it may seem like an unrelated practice attached only to provide a cute ending to the day, I will provide a few “pros” for that activity.

1. Saying a joke is a lot like a performance, in that it requires practice, memorizing, and a sense of timing. On the part of the audience it also involves a ritual of listening and celebrating each others gifts.
2. Humor offers another avenue to think creatively. Humor that does play on words, that surprises at the end, that tells a story, whichever it may be, each type of humor is an exercise in creativity.
3. This ritual of telling a joke attached at the very end of a class  leaves each person with a sweet taste of what may have been a period of hard work.

​Thank you for reading thus far, and let me know what you think!