Music Educators Association of New Jersey

Sophia Agranovich, Chair and MEA’s Program Committee bring us another gem  of a pianist for our general meeting on February 20th. Treating muscle memory as a friend and a foe is the best route to a solid memory. The most effective techniques in strengthening memory are those that change one’s routine physical sensation, essentially removing the “autopilot” variable. How does one make a passage ‘feel different’ so the brain is forced to engage? This presentation will examine practice techniques geared toward strengthening non-muscle memory through the playing/practicing of musical excerpts from the piano.

If you check Spencer Myer’s upcoming 2020 schedule, you will find quite an impressive concert listing. I stopped counting after 17, and that was only through July! Four concertos were scheduled in upcoming performances, including the Ravel G major, the Gerswhin and the Saint-Saëns No. 5, Op. 103 and No. 2 in G minor.  Spencer was featured on the cover of the January/February 2019 issue of "Clavier Companion" magazine in an up-close and personal interview with Lynn Worcester Jones. Here is a link to his website where you can explore more about this 21st Century Pianist: Here.  If you cannot make this upcoming meeting, be sure to check back at a later date for the highlights that will be written by Past President, Charlene Step. 

Joan Bujacich

Please note that Veda Kaplinsky, originally scheduled to be our Master Teacher for the  YA Master Class on June 11, notified us that she would need to reschedule for another year. We were very fortunate that Program Chair, Sophia Agranovich, was able to  get Joseph Kalichstein in her place!  

If you enjoy being creative with graphic design and the written word, you may be interested in volunteering your talent as the next Editor of the MEA’s e-letter, The Glissando. Interested parties should be able to work in Word or Pages, or a  comparable word processing/design program and be able to modify basic newsletter templates. Position needs to be filled ASAP to leave plenty of time for publication of the May Glissando.

For more detailed information contact President Yudit Terry: President@mea-nj.org

 Some of the works she  explored included:

A Face In The Crowd---program music about a single bird caught up in a mass migration and touchdown in a roosting place (part of a project I did about a real bird migration in Portland Oregon. Metal Works---uses the metal chopsticks.

Suspensions for Miyo Sensors and Piano, Red Hot Polka--where I do all sorts of crazy movement, including pushups at the piano.

Douglass Etudes ---for speaking pianist, using a text of Frederick Douglass; very fast blues with tricky rhythmic coordination.

Moving On---a piece where the pianist makes decisions about how the piece will be structured. 

The 2019-20 Membership Directory has been uploaded to your Member Homepage. Log on and take a look.  Membership Chiar, Lisa Gonzaleaz, did a great job. Thank you Lisa!  It is listed under Downloadable Documents on your Member Homepage. You can view or Download. 

Mr. Isler spoke about Constance Keene and Bruce Hungerford as teachers as well as performers. The third person he spoke  about was the Swiss pianist Adrian Aeschbacher (1912-2002), a Schnabel student, who had quite a busy concert career in his young and middle years.  He made a lot of records, but never performed in this country. Mr. Isler considers him to be a fantastic Schumann player. Aeschbacher actually lived in Mr. Isler’s  grandparents' home in Berlin for a while when he first went there in 1932 to study with Schnabel.  At that time his father to be was a ten year old student of Aeschbacher.

Here is Mr. Isler’s  account of what recordings he shared:

“I have released recordings of all three of these pianists on my KASP Records label, and will play examples. The two KASP Aeschbacher CD's are from his 1950's era records on Deutsche Grammophon, and other labels (for which I obtained the rights). They have music of Schumann, Schubert and Beethoven. The Keene CD is a live, never before released recital she played in Houston in 1995. It includes the Rachmaninoff Corelli Variations, a MacDowell sonata and some short pieces by him as well as some short pieces of her husband, Abram Chasins, and (perhaps most important) her only recording of the Chopin Ballades. She also makes some comments to the audience. 

 There are three Hungerford recordings on the KASP label. The first two are never before released live recitals which are long enough to require two CD's each. The first is a five sonata, all-Beethoven recital which he played in Germany in 1965 . For me it is one of the all-time great recorded Beethoven recitals. The second Hungerford project is his last recital, given in Calgary a month and a half before he died in a 1977 auto accident. It has music of Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert. 

 The third Hungerford project is something I was hoping to find for over 20 years until someone posted a bit of it on Facebook two years ago. It's a DVD, a live, made for TV concert from East Germany in 1964 in which he plays the Beethoven Fourth Piano Concerto. I'm planning to play the first movement. This is the only known video of his playing and having been able to produce this DVD is one of the projects I'm proudest of. “

If you would like to learn more about Don Isler, visit his website Here .

Rebecca Eng and Naomi Takagi, our Hospitality Co-chairs, organized a wonderful Pot Luck Luncheon! The meeting was a great success.  Jerome Lowenthal — concert pianist, chamber musician, and longtime revered Juilliard faculty member — presented a fascinating talk on the Neo-Classical Synthesis of Scriabin’s Sonata No. 6. Known as the “cursed” sonata, it is described as intense, dark, desolate, haunting, otherworldly and dark velvet all over. Mr. Lowenthal uncovered its secrets and shed a new light  on this mystical masterpiece.  Be sure to read the wonderful Highlights written by Beverly Shea!

Kelsey Lee, an eight-year student of Beatrice Long, was awarded the MEA-MJN College Scholarship for 2019. She will be studying piano performance at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, NY.  She was a first-place winner in the MEA 2019 Annual Piano Competition, 2nd-place winner in 2017 and performed in the 2016 Young Artist Master Class.  She served as the piano accompanist for the Summit High School Concert Choir and Treble Choir from 2015, among other notable activities. Principal oboist for the Summit HS Wind Ensemble, Kelsey performed with the NJ All State Wind Ensemble and the NJ Youth Symphony Orchestra. She was also a 2019 National Merit Scholar.
Kelsey was awarded an MEA Camp Scholarship in 2018 and attended the two-week Interharmony International Music Festival in Germany. Read her write-up of this inspirational experience Here. 

The MEA-MJN (Mary Jean Nelson) Scholarship Fund relies solely on the generosity of our donors, matching contributions from employers, and music sales at the monthly MEA general meetings. MEA is a nonprofit 501(c)(3) and all donations are tax-deductible. Making a contribution to the scholarship fund is a wonderful way to support aspiring musicians and perpetuate the beauty inherent in the arts. With your donation, you can also honor a person with congratulations (birthday, anniversary, graduation, etc.), get-well wishes, or in memoriam. Please help us continue our scholarship efforts!

 The MEA Scholarship Committee:  Sondra Tammam and Charlene Step, Co-chairs and
Sal Mallimo

 For more information on the scholarship program click Here.

 View the 2019 student compositions in a beautiful  booklet  which is available for current members to view/download.  Simply login to your  Member Homepage and look in the right-hand column under downloadable documents. Chair Kathy Knittel and  Christina Hansen did a great job putting this together!

To learn more about the Eric Steiner Original Composition Competition click Here.

All the Highlights for last season’s programs and events can be found under For Members/Highlights from our main menu.  Many thanks to all the writers, layout designers and photographers for bringing these great articles to our membership: Sophia Agranovich, Joan Bujacich, Lisa Gonzalez, Bertha Mandel, Nancy Modell, Beverly Shea and Charlene Step! If you are a great writer, photographer and/or good with graphic design using a program like Pages or Word and would like to find out how you can contribute, contact Joan Bujacich at website@mea-nj.org.

September 20, 2018: Homage to Bach
The Competition Committee performed  the repertoire from the 2019 Annual Piano Competition Syllabus (Highlights for this event are listed under the March.) 

October 18, 2018: Ingrid Clarfield
Keeping the Spark Alive and Still Learning After 50 Years: Pedagogical Tips from A to Z ingridclarfield.com

November 15, 2018: Juliana Osinchuk
Leonard Bernstein – the American Renaissance Man. Celebrating the Great Musician’s 100th Birthday linkedin.com/in/juliana-osinchuk-73b26b17

January 17, 2019: Jed Distler
The Golden Age of Pianism on Record www.jeddistler.com

February 21, 2019: Aaron Wunsch
Debussy and Visual Arts aaronwunsch.com

March 21, 2019: Joseph Kalichstein
Teachers Master Class juilliard.edu/music/faculty/kalichstein-joseph

April 18, 2019: Jeffrey Biegel
Modern Embellishments in Bach and Mozart jeffreybiegel.com

May 16, 2019: Adam Kent
Portraits of Barcelona — works by Catalan composers Federico Mompou and Manuel Blancafort adamkentmusic.com/about

June 13, 2019: Douglas Humpherys
Young Artist Master Class esm.rochester.edu/faculty/humpherys_douglas