Piano CompetitionsCooper International Competition Winners AnnouncedSeventeen-year-old Tony Siqi Yun (from Canada) recently won the 2018 Cooper Competition performing the Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 1 in B-flat Minor, Op. 23 in the concerto finals with The Cleveland Orchestra. Seventeen-year-old Kai-Min Chang (from Taiwan) placed second, pe...

The Elvina Pearce Teacher Education Fund The Frances Clark Center is thrilled to announce the generous and transformative gift received from renowned teacher Elvina Truman Pearce. This unprecedented legacy gift has been donated by Elvina to advance the mission of the Center through meaningful and high-quality teacher education. Through her generosi...

(S3) Preludes to Mastery, Books 1 and 2, by Chrissy Ricker. Chrissy Ricker's two books of preludes provide a fresh and varied assortment of pieces in Baroque, Classical, Romantic, and Contemporary styles.There are twenty preludes in the two volumes; each is in a different key, thus offering students exposure to keys they might not visit often. Book...

For centuries, improvising introductions to keyboard works, also known as preluding, helped inspire musicians and prepare audiences for what was to come. (The German verb präludieren and the French verb preluder can simply mean "to improvise.") Preluding had practical functions as well, allowing performers to warm up, test tuning, or adapt to unfa...