Find Your Voice As A Pianist

Exploring Your Motivations, Dreams and Goals

We will begin by exploring your motivations, dreams and goals for your piano journey. By evaluating your aspirations, we can discern whether those dreams and goals are motivated by fear and a need for validation, or whether they are aligned by a positive motivation. This is very important, as it can be incredibly revealing about what might be affecting you from your past or recent experiences.

We can use this process to identify where you might be putting too much pressure on yourself and adjust things accordingly. Sometimes this might be as simple as giving yourself more time to work towards a particular goal. At the same time, we can identify where you may be under-stretching yourself and holding yourself back.

We will also use the time to begin to explore repertoire ideas and choose the initial pieces you would like to work on.

Each 2-hour session will take the form of a practical session, much like a standard piano lesson, with the addition of hypnotherapy-based exercises to address psychological barriers. Sessions will integrate each of the core elements below:

 

Identifying and Releasing Mental Barriers To Performance

We all have limiting beliefs about ourselves which usually originate at an early age. These beliefs can create a narrowed perspective of your ability and how you see yourself as a pianist. Can you still hear echoes of your teachers or parents in your head from years ago?

Many pianists I have worked with have been left with mental scars from traumatic experiences during their early years and time at music college. These limiting beliefs are usually the root cause of performance anxiety, over/under-stretching, choosing repertoire which is either too hard or too easy, problems with memorisation, technical problems and believing you are never good enough.

We will work to identify what might be holding you back from true connection with yourself, the piano, your repertoire and your audience. Addressing how and what might be holding you back can open you up to your true potential where you are able to play to your greatest strengths, whilst challenging your perceived weaknesses.

 

Discovering Repertoire Which Makes You Shine

During the course of your programme, we will explore a range of repertoire which you feel a strong personal connection to. This may mean breaking away from the constraints of what you feel you ‘should’ be playing and instead choosing pieces where you can find your own voice.

This is an incredibly important component of the programme and you will have the chance to explore repertoire which fits your skill level, whilst still allowing you to improve and stretch your technique. You will be encouraged to explore unusual and less well-known repertoire to help you break away from convention and to allow you to blossom into an independent artist with a unique voice.

You will consider the historical context of the composers and pieces that you choose, along with the stylistic and harmonic language and use that to create a narrative which ties together your own personal connection with the music.

 

Crafting Your Personal Signature Style

Through the improvisatory exploration of sound, harmony, texture, style and tone, you will discover your signature strengths as a pianist. You will learn to shape your own personal style, using aspects of your personality and what makes you unique as a person. You will discover how to express exactly what you want through the music, whilst staying true to the composer’s intentions, style and context.

 

Developing Professional Stage Presence and Building Artistic Integrity

Stagecraft is the most important component of performance, and it’s far more than simply how you present yourself on stage. The whole preparation around a performance is your complete stagecraft ritual. You will learn how to refine this ritual to the finest detail, so that you always feel focused, organised, confident and ready before a performance.

How you present yourself on stage is indeed a very important aspect of stagecraft. It is your audience’s first point of connection and it can be incredibly revealing. It is a reflection of how you feel inside; your body will always reveal where you are not fully connecting to your art and your audience.

We will work with this information to help you to reconnect to yourself in a positive way and be more present to the moment. This centering in you can help you naturally embody a professional stage presence and artistic integrity which accurately reflects and expresses who you are.