The reality of performing, especially for amateurs, is that you will make a mistake.
Nancy M. Williams, Founding Editor
Dr. Bauman’s Brief on Personalizing Your Music Setting
An expert explains how musicians with hearing loss can personalize their hearing aids’ music setting by tuning in to the subjective nature of sound perception.
Dr. Chasin’s Checklist for Optimizing Your Hearing Aids for Music
For musicians with hearing loss, we offer this expert-verified checklist to take to your audiologist to create a better music program on your hearing aids.
Power Poses for Piano Practice
That neighbor walking past my house with his dog: did he hear snatches of my music through the window, and is that a smirk on his face?
I Reveal My Hearing Loss…at a Piano Recital
When I went back to the piano in my early 40s, I decided not to mention my hearing loss to my new teacher, Stephen.
Stories from Musicians with Hearing Loss
My deep connection to the piano and denial of my hearing loss are intimately intertwined.
Top 10 Holiday Gifts for Piano Nerds
Perhaps you—a cool indie-pop fan with a dusting of a beard or sleek leather booties—could not care less as to who came first, Bach or Beethoven.
Top 10 Benefits of Being a Piano Nerd
After years of practice, attending adult piano lessons, and perhaps even performing in amateur piano concerts, you’ve accepted that the piano is a focal point of your life.
My Clacking Shoe
Over the years of playing the piano in public, I’ve passed through many stages of performance anxiety. Perhaps the most difficult time was early on, when I expressed my stage fright through visible physical reactions. I will never forget my adult piano recital of Debussy’s Rêverie, in particular, my clacking shoe.
The Willy Wonka of Classical Music
A pianist seated at a grand, a violinist standing nearby in a small recital room: at first we expect a conventional performance video of a Bach violin concerto.
Veteran Plays Piano Despite Suicide Bomber Attack
Captain Mark Brogan lay on the ground of an Anbar province marketplace in Iraq in April, 2006. He had shrapnel in his spinal chord, was missing a third of his skull bone, and had severe arm injuries as well as hearing loss and tinnitus.
Top 5 Tips for Wearing Hearing Aids and Making Music
For every decibel that amateur pianist Joyce Morton has lost in hearing, she has gained double the wisdom about how to keep on making music despite her hearing loss.
Cast a Spell with Schumann’s Album for the Young
Schumann’s No. 30 from Album for the Young has a way of casting a spell of contemplation over its listeners. Whenever I perform this music, I meditate on how I reclaimed my passion for classical piano music. I want to share with you my secrets on how to study and play the No. 30 with best effect.
Why Pianists Need Musicians’ Earplugs
All musicians, including pianists, should invest in a set of custom musicians’ earplugs and keep them on hand for hearing protection in loud environments.
How to Find the Right Audiologist: Service, Service, Service
Since I was first diagnosed with a hearing loss at age six, I have been a patient of no less than 10 audiology practices over four decades. As an active person and a musician with hearing loss, I have special requirements for my hearing aids.
Understanding Tempo Rubato
For several years after I reclaimed my passion for the piano, I struggled with the concept of tempo rubato.
Faking It with My Hearing Loss
Fakers. We all know they’re out there when it comes to hearing loss. Of course, it takes a faker to know one.
Piano Trills and Bach
On a wintry Wednesday, my scarf wrapped over my face, I walked to the university’s music building for my piano lesson. In my gloved hand, I held a book with the Bach Invention No. 1 in C Major, with its tricky piano trills. On the rhododendron bushes lining the path, the leaves hung limply.
A Listening Profit from My Hearing Loss
My first career was in management consulting and high-tech marketing, and for the 20 years that I was in that line of work, I spent a lot of time and energy trying to hide my hearing loss.
Top 10 Warning Signs You May Be a Piano Nerd
This month marks my eight-year anniversary of reclaiming my passion for the piano. Now that so many years have elapsed, am I growing tired of studying the piano? Not at all! In fact, I have found that the longer I play the piano, the deeper my commitment grows.
Schumann’s Album for the Young No. 30 Played by Nancy M. Williams
Compared to Chopin, I’ve played very little of Schumann’s music, only the Träumerei, which I studied not long after I reclaimed my passion for the piano and enrolled in adult piano lessons.
The Making of The Cohen Variations
The song “Suzanne” by Leonard Cohen is not the usual fare for GRAND PIANO PASSION™. Yet I found myself admiring the song’s seductive, haunting quality when I researched this mini-documentary on the making of The Cohen Variations.
Four Hands: Piano Duet Pair Anna and Dmitri Shelest
The piano duet pair Anna Shelest and Dmitri Shelest first met at the Kharkiv Special Music School in Ukraine when they were 12 years old.
Simone Dinnerstein for Piano Students of All Ages
When I joined the concert pianist Simone Dinnerstein in her home studio, I asked questions not as a classical music critic or a piano pedagogue.