2013 in Review

With Anne Marie Page and Thomas
Green working on the syllabus revision.
Oh my goodness, do I ever enjoy
playing Steingraebers!

Regular Collaborative Piano Blog readers will know by now that this wasn't the busiest year on the blog. However, 2013 was a most profoundly rewarding year for me, with professional projects and milestones including:

• an active year of traveling for RCM Examinations, with stops in Winnipeg, Brandon, Mississauga, Dallas, Houston, Elizabethtown, Labrador City, Newfoundland, Kelowna, North Vancouver, and Boston. 
• one of the busiest teaching years for me, with over 50 students for much of the time. 
• working on revision of the Royal Conservatory's Piano Syllabus for the upcoming 2015 edition. My duties included revising the technical requirements with Janet Lopinski as well as revising the repertoire lists with Thomas Green and Anne Marie Page. The repertoire revision was one of the most fascinating activities I've done in a long time, as it required sight reading well over 500 works for piano, much of it on the Canadian Music Centre's lovely Steingraeber grand. 
• in early 2013 I served as Artistic Consultant for several recordings of the Royal Conservatory's new clarinet, trumpet, and viola syllabi. I had never worked in the production area of recordings before, so this was a rewarding new line of work to open up for me. Best of all, I got to sit in the booth with legendary recording engineer Anton Kwiatkowski, whose music and technical expertise in the recording field is second to none. 
• a featured article for the Royal Conservatory's Music Matters Newsletter. 
• an upcoming featured article for the Canadian Music Teacher Magazine and the BCRMTA Progressions magazine on my Evernote setup.

But in all honesty, having an insanely busy schedule made it difficult to keep up a steady stream of blog articles while managing a large number of projects at home and on the road. I'm indebted to Gillian Cummings and Dina Pollock for asking me to write articles (for RCM Music Matters and CFMTA publications respectively) for a large audience of teachers. I would also like to thank the CPB readership for your constant letters of encouragement, press releases, article ideas, requests for professional advice, and thanks. A shoutout also goes out to those who recognize me from the blog when I'm out and about in Toronto or elsewhere. Your engagement and thanks mean a great deal to me.

2014 promises to be no less a busy year - in a few weeks I travel to British Columbia again for examining routes in Prince George, Richmond, and Burnaby. Starting in February I'll be the Artistic Consultant for the Royal Conservatory's entire Piano Syllabus recordings - alongside Anton Kwiatkowski in the recording booth we'll be recording notable pianists such as Peter Longworth, Janet Lopinski, Dianne Werner, Ben Smith, Michael Esch, and Lang Ning Liu.

Best wishes for a healthy and prosperous 2014!

The view from my hotel room in Bay Roberts, Newfoundland, mid-June