UNE to host Australasian Piano Summer School

November 06, 2007

Many of Australia's leading music educators will come to Armidale next January to help conduct an innovative event: a five-day Summer School for talented young pianists.

The Australasian Piano Summer School, for students in Years 10, 11 and 12, will be held at the University of New England from the 21st to the 25th of January 2008. UNE's Dr Terrence Hays, the Artistic Coordinator of the Summer School, said that it aimed to "identify and mentor" young musicians in the years before they enter tertiary education.

The Summer School program will include piano master classes and individual lessons, workshops on improvisation, composition, interpretation, accompanying and ensemble playing, choir practice, sessions on coping with stress and anxiety in performance, and classes for students of other keyboard instruments including harpsichord, fortepiano and organ.

Kawai Australia is supporting the Summer School by providing 20 upright pianos for students to use for practice as well as five grand pianos.

Participants will pay a nominal registration fee to cover living costs (at UNE's Mary White College). The organisers expect that some partial scholarships will be made available to help disadvantaged students living in rural and remote areas to participate. Applications (details of which are available at: http://www.une.edu.au/apss) close on the 13th of November.

Joining Dr Hays in the team leading the Summer School will be Dr Andrew Alter and Dr Jason Stoessel from UNE Music, the choral conductor George Torbay, Dr Christine Logan (Head of the School of Music and Head of Keyboard Studies at the University of NSW), Dr Peter Roennfeldt (Director of the Queensland Conservatorium of Music), Graeme Gilling (Head of Keyboard, School of Music, University of Western Australia), Professor Dianna Kenny (Director of the Australian Centre for Applied Research and Performance in Music at the University of Sydney), Dr Robert Curry (Principal of the Conservatorium High School, Sydney), and Glen Riddle from the Victorian College of the Arts.

Another of the Summer School leaders will be the international concert pianist Michael Leslie, who is a Professor at the Richard Strauss Conservatory of Music in Munich, Germany.

Dr Hays said that the Summer School aimed – among other things – "to establish a collaborative research forum for studying aspects of keyboard performance".

Posted by Jim Scanlan at November 6, 2007 12:22 PM