Piano Studios Unite: International Online Mid-Year Piano Extravaganza

As our Piano Studios Unite Christmas Concert worked so well, Catherine and I (Georgina) were excited to create another International Online Concert. After a while of musing, we came up with the International Online Mid-Year Piano Extravaganza: an opportunity for studios from around the world to share performances of their students (any age, any ability, any style of music). The videos would be compiled together in concert playlists to be watched by everyone. Earlier this year, our Facebook group grew considerably to include members from America to Australia, and from Canada to Cambodia - our project was set to definitely be an International Extravaganza!

 At Greenside Music, we began recording our students' performances in April, and in total we have 26 videos, with students ranging from 8 to 49, and from beginner to Grade 8. We altered the decorations on our pianos for each student, so that all of our videos have a different feel, using the various instruments we have at Greenside. 

When we could, we matched the decorations to the piece or the student, for example percussion instruments for a drummer, and a Lego dragon for a piece called St George and the Dragon. 
We were pleased to see that a few other piano teachers had also dressed their pianos, for example Cathy (Michigan) and Virginia (Florida) had pretty flowers on their pianos

Cathy and her lovely orchid

and in Josie's videos from Australia various items had a starring role, for example a frog musical instrument in a piece called Leap Frog.

Josie's frog

Many of our students felt quite nervous when recording, wanting to do a good job as they knew they would be watched around the world. We think that everyone should be very proud of themselves; being videoed can be quite daunting and nerve-wracking, but overall everyone did a brilliant job and they now have a lovely long-lasting memento of a piece they worked hard on.

A few other piano teachers commented that their students were motivated to practice; Laura (Michigan) said her students were encouraged to try their best, in order to 'show their stuff' as they knew they were going to be watched around the world, and Cathy (Michigan) was impressed how her students 'strove for excellence' for their videos.

Donna (Canada) was the first person to send in a video, back in February, and since then there's been a steady stream of videos being sent to us. I stored them all in a playlist until they were ready to be sorted out.

We had asked everyone to wear black and/or white, to create a concert feel (and as Cathy put it 'to give the recital more pizzazz'), and we were very happy with how many people followed this dress-code! We feel it adds a more formal tone to the videos, and creates a feeling of unity between the students. Alice (Maine) impressed us with her dedication to the dress-code, as she rescheduled a recording sessions with a student who turned up not in black and white (we had to do this a few times too!)

As we had an impressive number of videos (136!) we knew they had to be divided into several mini-concerts. Not wanting to create any sort of hierarchy with 'Concert One' or 'Concert A' where it would seem as though the videos in Concert One were the best, we decided to name each concert after a colour. I then had a brainwave that there could be 12 playlists, with the first letter of each colour spelling out the word 'EXTRAVAGANZA'.
Not wanting to use ordinary colours, I scoured the Internet for interesting shades, and ended up with
Emerald, Xanthic, Turquoise, Ruby, Azure, Vermillion, Glacier, Alizarin, Navy, Zaffre, Amber.

Then came the task of sorting the videos into each playlist. We wanted a mix of ages, abilities, styles, and locations in each playlist, so I spread out the videos from each piano studio evenly between the 12 concerts, and experimented with the running orders until I was happy with how they played out. 

I created a programme for each concert so that it was easy to see where everyone's videos were, and then made it available to download (in colour, and in black and white so it was easy to print). 

Certificates were updated from last year's concert, and were then uploaded to the Facebook page so the participating piano teachers could print them out to give to the students who were videoed for the Extravaganza. 

On Monday 1st June 2015 the concerts went public, and are now available to watch!

Full concert HERE
Separate concerts HERE

Throughout the week we've been giving our students their certificates, and several other teachers around the world have been too!

 

We've also been showing them various videos - everyone has been very proud and impressed!

The feedback from the other piano teachers shows that this project was definitely worthwhile, and all the hours spent faffing was definitely time worth spent! 

 We are absolutely thrilled with how well our Piano Extravaganza turned out, and we'd like to thank everyone who took part: the teachers with endless patience, the hardworking and enthusiastic students, and the supportive parents. We hope you'll agree that it was all worthwhile; it's fantastic to watch all the different videos from around the world, and as Cathy said, you get to take a musical trip around the world without leaving your armchair!

We'll hopefully start planning the Online International Christmas Concert very soon, as Piano Studios Unite shows something very important: even though we may all be different ages, different abilities, and living in different places, we all have one thing in common:
we love the piano!