Music Educators Association of New Jersey

March 19, General Meeting/Teacher Master Class Cancelled

March 29, Annual Piano Competition Winners’ Recital Cancelled

March 31, Theory Registration Deadline (extended from March 21)

April 1, Annual Piano Competition Video Audition Deadline

April 5, Student Recitals Cancelled

April 8, Scherzo Club Cancelled

April 15, Annual Piano Auditions Registration deadline (extended from March 31)
Registration has temporarily been suspended.

April 16, General Meeting/ 50th Anniversary Celebration of the Annual Piano Competition, Cancelled

May 2, Original Composition Festival, Cancelled

The original theory registration deadline of March 21 has been extended to the end of the month, March 31. If you have any questions, please either call Marcia Maull, Chair, at 908-781-7574 or email  theory@mea-nj.org.

Spring theory registration is here!  Consider registering your students in the MEA Theory program anytime from March 1 to 21 either by mail or online.  Tests are only $5 each and can be administered at your leisure in your studio anytime during the year.  There are 15 levels of tests, with ribbons awarded to students for passing 3 and 5 tests, and gift cards for passing 7, 10 and all 15 tests.  The theory syllabus can be found on your Member Homepage.  

Questions?  Email Theory Chair, Marcia Maull, at theory@mea-nj.org.

Registration opens at 9:00 A.M. on Sunday, March 1.

You will find the following three documents listed  under Downloadable Documents on your Member Homepage.:

2019/20 Annual Audition Portal Tutorial

2020  Annual Auditions Information and Guidelines

2020 Annual Piano Audition Syllabus

If you forgot how to navigate the Audition Portal download the Audition Portal Tutorial. The dates and locations are listed in a helpful document entitled, 2020 Audition Information and Guidelines. And be sure to refer to the new 2020  Annual Piano Audition Syllabus for all the new repertoire guidelines and updates that are in the 2020 version.

To register your students and update your student information, log onto your Member Homepage  and click on the Audition Portal icon.

Best wishes for a great audition season!
Joan Bujacich,  Annual Piano Audition Director

Contact: Auditions@mea.nj.org

Due to the Corona Virus, Caldwell University has been closed for the rest of the semester. We are sorry to report that we will have to cancel the Original Composition Festival for this year. 

 Contact Kathy Knittel, Chair, with any questions at: compositioncompetition@mea-nj.org

 Thank you to members Luba Vasilyeva and Paul DiDario, who have been preparing to play for Mr. Roberts.  We thank them for the time they devoted to this event, and we are extremely disappointed to miss hearing them perform. Finally, our thanks to Beverly Shea, who has spent countless hours coordinating the Teachers' Master Class; we will truly miss attending this year.

Sophia Agranovich, Chair and MEA’s Program Committee brought 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.   

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.