Editor's note: These are longer versions of the articles from the May/June 2018 print version of Clavier Companion. Becoming Friends with Jane by Keith Porter-Snell I met Jane Smisor Bastien in the Spring of 1993, at the Joanna Hodges International Piano Competition and Conference, in Palm Desert, California. Jane was teaching masterclass...

"To provide a musically thrilling experience." --Willam Gillock, on the purpose of student piano literature I often ask my piano pedagogy students to take a few moments to reflect on their motivations for being a music major. After all, studying music is challenging and time consuming, and there's no clear-cut promise of financial riches at the end...

As a faculty member at the East Carolina University School of Music, I frequently taught our Piano Literature sequence. The last time I led these classes, I decided to add a new component to the second-semester schedule: films about pianist-composers. Hollywood through the years has found the artistic life irresistible, and there are quite a f...