Liam Viney

Preparing stylistically challenging contemporary classical repertoire for performance: Interpreting Kumari

Research involving the learning processes of musicians seldom examines specific pieces of music, and limited attention has been devoted to the earliest stages of learning a stylistically challenging or new piece of 20th-/21st-century art music. This article describes the processes by which two pianists (the authors) learned Ross Edwards’s Kumari, for solo piano. In doing so, it outlines five “elements” in a model for understanding or replicating that process. A key finding is the concept that some modern repertoire may require a preparation stage that occurs earlier than learning stages documented in the literature, one that establishes an “interpretation platform” for learning music in an unfamiliar style. This article offers a guide to pianists learning or teaching Kumari, other works by Edwards, and other stylistically challenging contemporary piano music. More broadly, it may serve as a model for any individual engaged with less familiar repertoire, and may, therefore, be of benefit to music educators working with students in challenging repertoire for solo instruments, ensembles or choirs.

Improving sight-reading skills in advanced pianists: A hybrid approach:

This article evaluates a new curriculum for training of sight-reading skills in advanced pianists that combined three teaching strategies proven effective in an earlier study. The course was developed collaboratively and trialed in two implementations. Twenty-five participants were pre- and post-tested and their playing analysed using custom-made software. Mixed-model ANCOVAs were used to analyse performance data against the results from the individual training programs. The findings show that the students using the hybrid program improved significantly in their sight-reading skills in all four categories measured, surpassing progress made in the individual programs. Implications for future research include application of such a hybrid approach to the training of younger pianists and to sight-reading on other instruments.