January - 2022

My Music Journey by Kaylene Duttchen

I was born into a musical family. My grandfather played violin mostly in the fiddle style; my mom played piano, accordion and sang; and my aunt played piano and accordion. I loved music and idolized my grandpa with his sweet fiddle. However, I was not so lucky as to inherit the musicality that some of my family simply just had. When I was 5, I started piano lessons but I really wanted to play the violin. My mom enrolled me in Suzuki violin group lessons at 6 years old ins

What Made You Think of Forming This Group? And How did You Start?

Ever since my second year of learning, I have always wanted to connect with other adult music learners and I had tried a number of different ways. I had gone to masterclasses, piano camps and performing arts festivals. However, I failed to find an existing group that gives me exactly what I am looking for. I found out about the Calgary Classical Piano Meetups in the summer of 2017 and to which I joined in August and am now a member. I have met many great pianists and musi

Kathy Bayley: My musical journey:

When I reflect on my childhood, no one in my large family took music lessons. My mom loved to sing for her own pleasure; my brother was in the church choir for several years. We sang in church and my parents played a lot of records. They listened to country music and the pop artists of their era. The only classical music I ever was exposed to as a child was during the Bugs Bunny Show, which our family loved to watch every week. Classical music was included as background m

Sight Reading 125 pieces Challenge - from 20/09/22 to 21/02/03. Reached 125 pieces on 21/01/26!

Hi everyone, Waterton National Park turned 125 this year! I haven't Visited for at least 5 years now but I have such fond memories so I wanted to celebrate the park's birthday. I posted this on our FB page and challenged everyone to think of 125 things that they could do. I decided to take this challenge on when I posted. I am celebrating Wateron's birthday by sight reading 125 before the end of the year! If anyone knows me, I am a really bad sightreader however, I ha

A New Beginning /Sep 15, 2019

So here we are - it's September - the beginning of a new year. Unlike others who think of January as the beginning of the year - I think of September as the beginning, I guess old habits of a learning student die hard. So I have big news - I made the big leap this summer - I made the decision to leave Chinook School of Music(CSM) as a piano student ( I am still a voice student there - I began voice lessons in Feb 2019) I started my piano learning there in September of 201

March - March Madness - Part 2 - APTA festival - overcoming performance anxiety & networking 190520

I am finishing my March post because I have some free time now. I brought my laptop on my vacation with me so I had started this two part blog at the end of March so forgive the tardiness of this second post. (I added more to this blog today) On March 8th, I participated in the APTA festival for the first time and decided to do something new to push myself and that was to perform more than 1 piece for adjudication - I performed 3 - a Bach Prelude, a Schubert Waltz and a Duke

March Madness - part 1 - Gift of Music, new added focus for our learning group, collaboration and ou

March was a frenzy of important events for me and I could feel all the positive energy in a big way. I am blogging about it so I can keep a record of it. but I also find writing really helps me to pause and reflect on what I've learned from each event and how it is helping me to get where I want to go in my musical goals. I will start by relating them in chronological order but I may jump around with my ideas and concepts. On March 2nd, I sang for the first time in an uncon

Performance Anxiety and Setting the Stage for Peak Performance Feb 18, 2019

So one of the perks about being Chinese Canadian is that I get to experience New Year twice. Chinese New Year was on February 5th and this event creates an opportunity for me to feel better about the lack of progress of my newly minted year's goals because for a Chinese person, it hasn't really happened yet. But this year, it also gave me a chance to really determine what has been troubling me these past 2.5 months. I started reflecting after my anxiety ridden piano perfor

Epiphanies and Insights for 2019

I am sorry that I haven't written in a while. The reason for my absence was that I overcommitted myself with an extra job which I took steps in mid-November to extricate myself from. After a grueling September, October and November where I was managing with only a few hours sleep each night, I was able to have a much better December. I have been catching up on my rest these past few weeks and have had time to reflect and can see much more clearly how I want my life to look

Honens Laureate concert 2018

Hi everyone, I have been so busy that I was not able to finish this blog on the Honens Laureate concert that I attended on Wednesday, September 5th. I have just completed it albeit 3 months late. I was at a symphony concert on Wednesday night featuring Honens laureate Luca Buratto and Szymon Nehring as part of the Honens festival. These two A-list pianists couldn’t be more different. Buratto played first and his performance was captivating but not in the usual sense. He g

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