Charles Wu's Piano Studio Blog

CD Recommendation Olé México GNP Alondra de la Parra – Conductor Pitingo, Concha Buika, Lila Downs - Voice available on Spotify, Tidal, Apple Music, Youtube Music Mexican conductor Alondra de la Parra’s latest project brought together three of the most decorated Spanish and Mexican singers for a grand celebration of Mexican songs. All singers were stellar but Spanish singer Pitingo stole the show in all the tracks he contributed. Clearly having a blast, his raspy tenor voice was both capable of great verve and tender lyricism as exemplified in the standout track Granada . Middle-aged Concha Buika and Lila Downs might no longer have the lush and seductive voices of younger female singers, but they made it up by having plenty of authority, maturity, and energy. In Amor Eterna , I thoroughly enjoyed Concha Buika’s pining for eternal love, her throaty voice conveying perfect amount of anguish and regret that is often missing from younger singers’ rendition of this piece. I could n...

  Returning to Performing as Adult Advanced Pianist – Part 1 – Addressing Tension and Technical Issues I think we all can agree that as a piano teacher that the benefit of maintaining a practicing and performing routine is immeasurable. But juggling this with long hours of teaching, family life, and other adult commitments is by no means easy. But sadly, and understandably, the number of teachers and adults who no longer practice and perform far outnumber those who do. If you would like to take that first step to start performing again, read on. I’m sure you were at one point of your younger life were a competent performer; any teachers who had studied for formal music qualifications had to be. You might even at one point be performing fiendishly difficult pieces like Liszt’s Transcendental Etudes or even piano concertos. You decided to start practicing again, resuming from the point where you stopped. And it soon dawned upon you that you could not move as agile as you used to,...

Biała flaga Hania Rani – Piano Dobrawa Czocher - Cello available on Spotify, Tidal, Apple Music, Youtube Music When it comes to recommending contemporary classical music, most would probably suggest the usual household names like Yann Tiersen, Ludovico Einaudi or Ryuichi Sakamoto. But of course, there are so much more to discover beyond these popular few. Biała flaga is 100% Polish affair, featuring contemporary classical music from Poland and performed by Polish pianist Hania Rani and cellist Dobrawa Czocher. I chanced upon this CD by accident because I wanted to check out further what Dobrawa Czocher had recorded, and I was glad I did. Hania Rani herself contributed a few compositions of her own, but the spotlight of this CD is on the compositions of the late Grzegorz Ciechowski, who tragically passed away at the age 44 in 2001. Ciechowski’s music could be best described as Yann Tiersen on steroids. More neo-classical than minimalistic, each of his compositions featured here a...

Motivating a Young Pianist – A Quick Guide for Parents Most students probably only see their teachers once a week. While certainly an empathetic teacher could do wonders to motivate a young learner, daily support from parents is far more crucial to ensure consistent progress and maintain motivation level. This guide is written mainly for parents of young children. I’ve included important pointers parents would do well to know to support their children emotionally and psychologically as they began embarking on a long and arduous journey to become a competent pianist. 1.  Learning piano is hard and seldom fun. The first thing I always tell parents who are starting their children with me is that learning piano is not a bed of roses. Motivation and interest in the instrument need to be gradually and constantly nurtured. True, there might be minority few who would be naturally intrinsically motivated because they genuinely love music, or they simply enjoy the challenge of learning...