Pianists Not Practicing

Segunda ParteThis week we continue our convo with Alba and it is so FULL of amazing strategies and ideas for how to approach performing and practicing. Definitely check out Part One of this conversation in Episode 13 if you haven’t already! In this convo, we chat about Alba’s memorization and practice strategies, including mental rehearsal and visualization, her mindset for performing from memory on stage, and what happens when you meld together two different mozart sonatas on stage! She believes that the best part of being a musician is having the chance to evolve, learn and improve - approaching making music like a craftsman - always refining and working on the process. The craftsmanship is what makes our work artistic - crafting sound, colour, and beauty into our repertoire. She reminds us that our journeys as musicians are not about achievement but all about process.—-Meet the “heir to the great legacy of the Spanish piano school”, Alba Ventura. Born in Barcelona, Alba is a passionate, nuanced performer who made her solo debut at the age of thirteen performing Mozart’s “Jeunehomme” piano concerto with the Cadaqués Orchestra and Sir N Marriner. She began her studies at the Académia Marshall, founded by Enrique Granados, and her mentors include Carlotta Garriga, Alicia De Larrocha, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Dimitri Bashkirov and Irina Zaritskaya. Her discography includes a wide range of repertoire - everything from Mozart to Rachmaninoff to Rautavaara, and of course includes the Spanish giants: Granados, Albeniz and Mompou. We caught up with Alba in her practice studio in Barcelona where she shared her depth of experience and wisdom with us - sharing her journey as a concert pianist, and how she finds balance as a professor, mother, chamber musician, recording artist and performer.This conversation is full of light and joy and love for music. I can’t wait for you to hear it and to learn from this incredible artist!Connect with Alba here: www.albaventura.comFollow Alba on instagram @albaclassicsListen to her new album IBERIA here!✨ Stay connected with Pianists Not Practicing:Instagram — @ChloeWestonPianistYouTube — @ChloeWestonPianist🎶 Intro/Outro Music: Ankur Mukhopadhyay — @ankurrmm🎙️ Produced by: phMediaStudio, LLC

Primera ParteMeet the “heir to the great legacy of the Spanish piano school”, Alba Ventura. Born in Barcelona, Alba is a passionate, nuanced performer who made her solo debut at the age of thirteen performing Mozart’s “Jeunehomme” piano concerto with the Cadaqués Orchestra and Sir N Marriner. She began her studies at the Académia Marshall, founded by Enrique Granados, and her mentors include Carlotta Garriga, Alicia De Larrocha, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Dimitri Bashkirov and Irina Zaritskaya. Her discography includes a wide range of repertoire - everything from Mozart to Rachmaninoff to Rautavaara, and of course includes the Spanish giants: Granados, Albeniz and Mompou. We caught up with Alba in her practice studio in Barcelona where she shared her depth of experience and wisdom with us - sharing her journey as a concert pianist, and how she finds balance as a professor, mother, chamber musician, recording artist and performer. In this convo, we dive into her methods of preparing music, how she practices, the power of mental rehearsal and visualization, and the importance of following your own voice and strengths as you make your way on your own artistic path. Ultimately, her message is to enjoy the process in all of its forms - from your practice alone at the instrument, to the ebbs and flow of career milestones, and not to be afraid to continually refine as you go.This conversation is full of light and joy and love for music. I can’t wait for you to hear it and to learn from this incredible artist!Connect with Alba here: www.albaventura.comFollow Alba on instagram @albaclassicsListen to her new album IBERIA here!✨ Stay connected with Pianists Not Practicing:Instagram — @ChloeWestonPianistYouTube — @ChloeWestonPianist🎶 Intro/Outro Music: Ankur Mukhopadhyay — @ankurrmm🎙️ Produced by: phMediaStudio, LLC

Described as “one of those artists who can make classical music such great fun” (Sedona Red Rock News), Dr. James Palmer is an American pianist who is equally at home as a soloist, collaborator, presenter, and teacher. He is a dynamic musician, and just a lovely human being, currently on faculty at the Shepherd School of Music at Rice University in Houston, Texas. This conversation is full of inspiration and ideas - James is such a creative person, who is always dreaming up new concepts and ideas of how to share the music he loves with audiences. We discuss how he has grown his performing career (from word of mouth to cold emailing!), the power of going to concerts and being inspired by others to create your next new idea, his obsession with Scriabin and how it has manifested into an incredible youtube series, and his brand new shiny concert series that he will be launching this fall in Houston! He shares his perspective on how he has searched for his own artistic voice through integrating all of the different parts of himself, and how we can all follow our curiosity and joy to find the career of our dreams.Connect with James here: www.jamespalmerpiano.comFollow James on instagram @jamespalmerpiano✨ Stay connected with Pianists Not Practicing:Instagram — @ChloeWestonPianistYouTube — @ChloeWestonPianist🎶 Intro/Outro Music: Ankur Mukhopadhyay — @ankurrmm🎙️ Produced by: phMediaStudio, LLC

A self-proclaimed “singer in a pianist’s body”, Robert is an incredibly hilarious and talented vocal coach and pianist on faculty at the University of Kentucky, where he performs and coaches singers with his signature wit, and down-to-business coaching style. This episode is full of amazing ideas and insights into performance and preparation. Robert shares with us how he strives for excellence rather than perfectionism, and prioritizes how he wants the audience to experience the music rather than worrying about the right or wrong of it all. He encourages us to show up and give that day’s 100%, focus on joyful expression, keep the music feeling fresh and electric, and to dive in the deep end!We are so lucky to absorb his wisdom and joy in this episode - please enjoy this amazing chat with Robert Bosworth, trained musician ™!Learn more about Robert here: www.robertbosworthmusic.comFollow Robert on instagram @robertbosworthmusic✨ Stay connected with Pianists Not Practicing:Instagram — @ChloeWestonPianistYouTube — @ChloeWestonPianist🎶 Intro/Outro Music: Ankur Mukhopadhyay — @ankurrmm🎙️ Produced by: phMediaStudio, LLC

Described by her listeners as mesmerizing and otherworldly, Canadian pianist Katherine Dowling thrives on the intimacy of live performance - always playing from memory so that the music is fully internalized. She loves to discover sounds that she has never heard nor imagined before, to explore beauty that isn’t nice or pretty.In this convo we discuss the flexibility and synchronicity involved in artistic careers and how Katherine has navigated delightfully unexpected opportunities on her artistic path. She is a champion of new music, which is clearly displayed through her latest album, titled Awake and Dreaming, which features music by Canadian composer Alice Ping Yee Ho.Katherine shares with us how she approaches welcoming audiences into the world of new music, and her mission to cultivate demand for live music experiences and continue to offer the precious opportunity for stillness and communion through live performance in an increasingly digitized world.Listen to Katherine’s album Awake and DreamingKatherine’s recording of Alice Ping Yee Ho’s Aeon is featured in this episode Learn more about Katherine here: www.katherinedowling.comFollow Katherine on instagram @katherinedowlingpiano✨ Stay connected with Pianists Not Practicing:Instagram — @ChloeWestonPianistYouTube — @ChloeWestonPianist🎶 Intro/Outro Music: Ankur Mukhopadhyay — @ankurrmm🎙️ Produced by: phMediaStudio, LLC

Welcome to a masterclass in concert curation with the incredibly innovative Elizabeth Newkirk: pianist, artist, and writer based in Houston, TX.This episode showcases her creative ability to make connections across art forms to curate incredibly interesting concert experiences for her audiences in her concert series THE ARCHETYPE OF MODERN MAN. Elizabeth also reminds us to continuously be your own teacher - and that if you can learn a Beethoven trio - you have the skills to fundraise, advertise, curate concerts, and read poetry of course!And new this week - here’s your homework! Go buy this book!You can listen to Elizabeth’s album here: the Americanist by Elizabeth Newkirk on Apple Music ClassicalAnd read her essay THE AMERICANIST here: https://issuu.com/me7884/docs/art_style_magazine_volume_12_issue_12_setemYou can learn more about Elizabeth here: www.elizabethnewkirk.comYou can follow Elizabeth on instagram @eliznewkirk✨ Stay connected with Pianists Not Practicing:Instagram — @ChloeWestonPianistYouTube — @ChloeWestonPianist🎶 Intro/Outro Music: Ankur Mukhopadhyay — @ankurrmm🎙️ Produced by: phMediaStudio, LLC

Elizabeth Newkirk is an American classical pianist, writer, and curator. She specializes in music of the early 20th century, and her scholarship explores the foundations of culture, convention, and archetypes. As a passionate humanist, her curations and performances seek to put the humanities into practice.This convo explores her work as an artist and writer, her album THE AMERICANIST, and her concert series THE ARCHETYPE OF MODERN MAN. Her insatiable curiosity has led her from classical piano, to poetry, literature, critical commentary, and back again. We dive into the deep philosophical questions that connect our art as classical musicians to poetry, literature, and the nature of the universal human experience and how these themes interact with her work as a performer and professor.Why come to a classical music concert? What can we offer? How do we introduce new audiences to the music we love? Stay tuned to find out! You can listen to Elizabeth’s album here: the Americanist by Elizabeth Newkirk on Apple Music ClassicalAnd read her essay THE AMERICANIST here: https://issuu.com/me7884/docs/art_style_magazine_volume_12_issue_12_setemYou can learn more about Elizabeth here: www.elizabethnewkirk.comYou can follow Elizabeth on instagram @eliznewkirk✨ Stay connected with Pianists Not Practicing:Instagram — @ChloeWestonPianistYouTube — @ChloeWestonPianist🎶 Intro/Outro Music: Ankur Mukhopadhyay — @ankurrmm🎙️ Produced by: phMediaStudio, LLC

Meet Nicole - our first collaborative pianist on the podcast! She is not your average pianist 💅 and has built a career at the intersection of artistry, innovation, and service. An active performer, educator, and arts administrator, she is deeply committed to expanding the reach of collaborative piano through performance, teaching, and community engagement. This convo is filled w incredible insights into the ups and downs of a collab career and the unique skill sets that collab pianists must cultivate on their road to success. Her passion for connecting with audiences and her focus on uplifting and encouraging each and every musician she plays with shines through as she shares her story. Currently based in Macon, Georgia, Nicole is on a mission to advocate for her collab community and cultivate meaningful relationships with her artistic partners. She shares what skills and values truly matter and how we can refocus on the beautiful opportunity we have to connect with the world around us as musicians.You can follow Nicole @nicocoleyingwww.nicoleying.com✨ Stay connected with Pianists Not Practicing:Instagram — @ChloeWestonPianistYouTube — @ChloeWestonPianist🎶 Intro/Outro Music: Ankur Mukhopadhyay — @ankurrmm🎙️ Produced by: phMediaStudio, LLC

We’re back with Mark to recap the premiere of his piano concerto RUMINATIONS just hours after walking offstage! If you haven’t heard episode 5 yet go ahead and check that out to hear all about the creation of this project and how it came to be! In this episode, we chat about the big premiere, the experience of performing music by living composers vs music of the established canon, performing a piano concerto with no conductor (👀) and the joy of playing music by your friends with your friends! 💕You can watch the premiere of RUMINATIONS here!:https://youtu.be/Fpd4wQXRJjU?si=FZ3Fay0tPriEfyZYThank you to Graham Lessard, audio engineer and Vicki Van Chau & Philip Bowen, videographers, for capturing the premiere so beautifully in our recording! This is such a meaningful, dream-come-true project for us that would not be possible without support from the Ontario Arts Council, the Canada Council for the Arts, Alberta Foundation for the Arts, Calgary Arts Development and the City of Calgary and the collaboration with the incredible artists of Kensington Sinfonia and the Calgary Philharmonic listed here:ViolinGenevieve Micheletti Eric AuerbachIsaac WillocksErin BurkholderDiane LaneSora KimViolaLiza Scriggins LowryPatricia HigginsEthan MungCelloAndrea Case Kathleen de CaenTakumi RodgersBassMatthew HellerFluteEmily PernambucqClarinetCedric BlaryHornPeter ClarkTrumpetAdam ZinatelliPercussionChris SiesYou can follow Mark @mark.limacher on instagram✨ Stay connected with Pianists Not Practicing:Instagram — @ChloeWestonPianistYouTube — @ChloeWestonPianist🎶 Intro/Outro Music: Ankur Mukhopadhyay — @ankurrmm🎙️ Produced by: phMediaStudio, LLC

Meet Mark Limacher - Canadian composer, pianist, arranger/orchestrator extraordinaire - who just happens to be a bonafide genius and one of my favourite people. We caught up with Mark hours before we premiered his piano concerto that I commissioned - RUMINATIONS - in Calgary with the Kensington Sinfonia this June. Mark shares with us his compositional process, what it means to bring a concerto to life that reflects our time - we talk Puccini, Messiaen and Mompou and dive into how this incredible concerto came to be. In typical Mark fashion, we of course even stray into Marxist psychoanalytic philosophy and the state of the world and how us as artists making music fits into our society and how much we both love Gen Micheletti! 🎻 Mark is a one-of-a-kind human who I can’t wait for you to meet!You can watch the premiere of RUMINATIONS here!:https://youtu.be/Fpd4wQXRJjU?si=FZ3Fay0tPriEfyZYThank you to Graham Lessard, audio engineer and Vicki Van Chau & Philip Bowen, videographers, for capturing the premiere so beautifully in our recording! This is such a meaningful, dream-come-true project for us that would not be possible without support from the Ontario Arts Council, the Canada Council for the Arts, Alberta Foundation for the Arts, Calgary Arts Development and the City of Calgary and the collaboration with the incredible artists of Kensington Sinfonia and the Calgary Philharmonic listed here:ViolinGenevieve Micheletti Eric AuerbachIsaac WillocksErin BurkholderDiane LaneSora KimViolaLiza Scriggins LowryPatricia HigginsEthan MungCelloAndrea Case Kathleen de CaenTakumi RodgersBassMatthew HellerFluteEmily PernambucqClarinetCedric BlaryHornPeter ClarkTrumpetAdam ZinatelliPercussionChris SiesYou can follow Mark @mark.limacher on instagram✨ Stay connected with Pianists Not Practicing:Instagram — @ChloeWestonPianistYouTube — @ChloeWestonPianist🎶 Intro/Outro Music: Ankur Mukhopadhyay — @ankurrmm🎙️ Produced by: phMediaStudio, LLC

PIANISTS NOT PRACTICING… in Vienna… with NATHALIE MATTHYSMeet the multi-talented, creative queen NATHALIE MATTHYS who’s multi-faceted career includes performing, arranging and composing works both in the world of jazz and the world of classical - from singing jazz standards with a jazz combo to performing classical chamber music and piano concerti with orchestras. You may know her online as @n.musician on youtube where she shares weekly tips for all things music - and is always inspiring and encouraging musicians to share their light with the world. We caught up with Nathalie in Vienna, and she shared with us her powerful story perseverance, how to advocate for your dreams as an artist, her journey to a fullbright scholarship to study in the US, her experience with injury and how she takes care of her body and what keeps her aligned and inspired on her musical path ✨“Everything you want is on the other side of fear” 🔥You can follow Nathalie on instagram @n.musicianand YouTube @NMusicianhttps://nathaliematthys.com✨ Stay connected with Pianists Not Practicing:Instagram — @ChloeWestonPianistYouTube — @ChloeWestonPianist🎶 Intro/Outro Music: Ankur Mukhopadhyay — @ankurrmm🎙️ Produced by: phMediaStudio, LLC

Welcome to a masterclass with the incredibly inspiring and uplifting Michelle Lynne! ☀️She is an absolute ray of sunshine who is most often gallivanting across Europe performing beautiful candlelight concerts, curating thoughtful chamber music concerts through her series Opus 16, or empowering classical musicians to overcome fear and go after the career of their dreams through her coaching company the fearless artist mastermind 💪We dive into her origin story, her multi-faceted performing career, we reflect on our time studying together at porto pianofest this summer and we also get into the amazing tools that she shares through the fearless artist mastermind - her coaching company for musicians that she founded alongside Deanna Petre.Tune into get all the goods on branding, maintaining your energy while navigating a wild freelance schedule, and the one thing that pianists need to remember as they curate their career ⚡️Follow Michelle @thisismichellelynneFollow TFA @thefearlessartistmastermindAnd listen to her new single out now on Spotify:  Michelle Lynne✨ Stay connected with Pianists Not Practicing:Instagram — @ChloeWestonPianistYouTube — @ChloeWestonPianist🎶 Intro/Outro Music: Ankur Mukhopadhyay — @ankurrmm🎙️ Produced by: phMediaStudio, LLC

Welcome to real talk w Clare Longendyke 🥊Meet the powerhouse American pianist, Clare Longendyke - she says vulnerability is her superpower and we are here for it! In this convo, Clare shares so many golden nuggets of wisdom on how to truly make a performance career happen - fundraising, the power of research, networking and asking for help, how to create a successful album launch, how to invite audiences into our classical music world - oh, and of course, all while having a baby - we covered it all, baby! You can meet Clare here: https://www.instagram.com/clarelongendyke.piano?igsh=Z3RvM2d1NWFjd2pzAnd listen to her debut album here: ...of dreams unveiled by Clare Longendyke on Apple Music ClassicalAnd Watch her play Schumann Arabeske here: https://youtu.be/QzSKZorxeNs?si=HffoUfRTaCYMZmvLFeaturing Clare’s performance of Olga by Amy Williams from Piano Portraits: Track: Olga – Clare Longendyke https://classical.music.apple.com/ca/album/1760279427?i=1760279429&l=en-CAwww.clarelongendyke.com✨ Stay connected with Pianists Not Practicing:Instagram — @ChloeWestonPianistYouTube — @ChloeWestonPianist🎶 Intro/Outro Music: Ankur Mukhopadhyay — @ankurrmm🎙️ Produced by: phMediaStudio, LLC

You may know her as @theopenscore on Instagram and YouTube. Her name is Michelle Lau. She is a multi-passionate, multi-talented artist. She can perform. She can teach. She's a videographer. She's an editor. She's a social media strategist. I've always been inspired by her and her mindset of just try it - just try creating what you want and see what happens!Michelle has created multiple YouTube channels, different teaching platforms, new and unique performance experiences for audiences, and I really love that she's our first interview because she is truly the epitome of the creative chameleon. In this convo we talk practice, creativity, portfolio careers, mindset, physical training outside of piano, focusing on self-worth versus external worth on socials - so much. She encourages us to just act on our creative ideas and expand your creative endeavours without fear. She shares what she learned as she overcame injury, and how volleyball may just solve all of your problems…✨ Stay connected with Pianists Not Practicing:Instagram — @ChloeWestonPianistYouTube — @ChloeWestonPianist🎶 Intro/Outro Music: Ankur Mukhopadhyay — @ankurrmm🎙️ Produced by: phMediaStudio, LLC

Welcome to Pianists Not Practicing — A biweekly show that catches classical pianists out in the wild - outside of the practice room (!!) - and spills all the juicy details about their lives. We dive into candid, unfiltered conversations with pianists at all stages of their careers—from seasoned pros to fresh-faced grads. OK fine, we’ll talk about practicing — let’s be real — but we’ll also get into everything else: the creative process, career twists and turns, mindset, body care, and all the behind-the-scenes realities of being a musician.So, whether you’re looking for inspiration, solidarity, or you just wanna hang out in the practice room hallway, talk shit, and avoid practice with us — you’re in the right place. We’re all in this together.Hosted by Canadian classical pianist, Chloe Weston You can keep up with Pianists Not Practicing on Instagram @ChloeWestonPianist and YouTube @ChloeWestonPianist--Intro/outro music by Ankur Mukhopadhyay @ankurrmmProduced by phMediaStudio, LLC