Category Archives: Music

Piano Recital at Spring Arbor

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On June 30, we performed piano selections of our choice at an assisted living facility called Spring Arbor. Zeke’s and my piano teacher had set us up to play here as an end-of-the-year piano recital and invited Houston to play a couple songs, as well. To open and close the recital, Zeke and I played two duets, with us all performing individual pieces in between.

Because it’s so different from just practicing at home, playing in front of an audience is a great experience. Moreover, the residents were delighted by our recital, so much so that we’ve already had another performance since and we plan on returning to Spring Arbor monthly.

Piano Recital

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A few weeks ago on May 11, I performed a recital with two cellists. My piano teacher, Kerry, was one of them and the other was her cello teacher, Ryan. You can see his bio here: http://www.ryangraebert.com/cellist/index.php

We performed the recital at her house in front of a few people, including our families, a few of her neighbors, and my father confessor Father John Whiteford and his Matushka Patricia.

Here is a list of songs that we performed.

The first four songs were just performed by me and my teacher, but we all played the last song.

Piano facts

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Piano facts
By Gabriel

I am going to tell some weird and cool facts about piano and piano players:

  • Did you know Chopin only gave 30 public performances during his entire lifetime?
  • Did you also know some of Mozart’s fame wasn’t from piano; it was from toilet humor?
  • Did you know Bartolomeo Cristofori invented the first piano? He was born on May 4, 1655, in Padua, Republic of Venice, and died January 27, 1732, in Florence, Italy.
  • Some people think that the piano is part of the percussion section because you tap it, but it’s actually part of the strings.
  • The piano took the harpsichord’s place as the dominant keyboard instrument during the Romantic era.
  • Did you know Bach wasn’t famous until 100 years after he died?
  • Beethoven was totally deaf by the time he wrote the famous 9th Symphony.
  • Beethoven was important because people thought his music was “reasonable” and a bridge between the Classical and Romantic eras.
  • Black keys on the piano play sharps and flats, but white ones typically play normal pitch.
  • The keys on the piano are usually made out of plastic or ivory, which is elephant tusk.
  • The dynamics (this is how soft or high you play) on the piano sheet music look like p for soft, f for loud, mf for medium loud, mp for medium soft, ff very loud, and pp very soft.
  • There is also something called legato and stacato. Legato is smooth and stacato is bumpy.

Thank you for reading the facts I found. The end!