Piano Competitions Cooper 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, p...

(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. Boo...

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...