by Madeline Bruser | Mar 18, 2020 | Uncategorized
Last Thursday, my brother sent me an article about the coronavirus that stunned me. I canceled my plans to leave on Saturday for a meditation retreat in Vermont and am doing my retreat at home. By Friday I had asked all my students to switch to online lessons. Then...
by Madeline Bruser | Mar 2, 2020 | Uncategorized
This story describes how our anxiety about having a memory lapse in performance can be overcome by cultivating our natural coordination and our natural responsiveness to sound“I was the kid who sat at the piano for three hours playing and singing every day when I was...
by Madeline Bruser | Feb 24, 2020 | Uncategorized
This story describes one of the primary ingredients in overcoming performance anxiety: achieving a full connection with the constantly shifting human energies in a piece of music. After discovering how to let go of excess tension in his arms and play more freely and...
by Madeline Bruser | Feb 17, 2020 | Uncategorized
At a recent lesson with me on a virtuosic piece by Liszt, Evan saw that he was creating unnecessary tension in his arms by holding his elbows out. As soon as he he let them relax, he began playing with tremendous freedom, and brilliant energy leapt out of the piano....
by Madeline Bruser | Feb 3, 2020 | Uncategorized
When Brian began studying with me a couple years ago, he wanted to recover from an injury he had developed at the piano. He couldn’t do some of the things his previous teacher had asked him to do — dropping his arm directly into the keys, or hitting keys directly and...
by Madeline Bruser | Jan 27, 2020 | Uncategorized
This story describes how a musician can begin to develop a healthy instrumental technique by having an open mind and focusing on simple, comfortable movements, rather than overexerting physically or mentally. Although the story is about a beginner, all of us, no...
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