About the Book
DVD OF iDEMOS NOW AVAILABLE SEPARATELY!Knowledge is a wonderful thing. Have you ever noticed, though, that the more you have, the more you seem to need? In an earlier volume, "Piano Technique Demystified: Insights into Problem Solving," we learned that it is more efficient to move than to stretch to an extreme and how to make decisions regarding fingering. We learned how to "get after" a passage and to play "honestly." We learned that mindless-rote is more likely to produce technical vagaries than reliable passage work. Perhaps most importantly, we learned that if a passage doesn't feel easy, then we haven't solved it. The essays in this book-along with the 141 musical examples and over an hour of YouTube iDemos-are like mini private lessons. You will find here brain teasers drawn from concert repertoire at intermediate to advanced levels that are designed to develop an instinct for building a practical technique. You will learn more about solving technical problems, the point of which is to make music with ease and efficiency. Knowing how it is that you do what you do is the objective. There is really nothing more satisfying than that.***Amazon Review: "Neil Stannard's book 'Mystified No More', like his earlier volume '"Piano Technique Demystified', is an essential reference book for all pianists and teachers of piano. Despite its technical content, the writing is both colourful and entertaining. The advice offered is succinct and clearly described, with accompanying examples from the piano repertoire simply presented on short YouTube video demonstrations," William.***Praise for the first volume, Piano Technique Demystified: Insights Into Problem Solving: "This book is a delightful collection of helpful insights. A terrific aspect is its inclusion of online video demonstrations. Many of the fingerings, note-grouping concepts, rotational ideas and so on make the passages in the examples easier to play than when approached with more traditional ideas." American Music Teacher, Feb./Mar., 2015.***Amazon Reviews: "This is an excellent book. Whether you are an advanced pianist or a novice, the concepts shared in this book will bring your technical skills at the piano to a new level," Ashley Rose, March, 2015.***"If there is 'A' right way to play, you will learn it here, because Stannard's tips are based on the body biomechanics principles," Flavio Chaperone, August, 2015.
About the Author: Unlike life, playing the piano is easy and doesn't hurt. This mantra has carried the author through what might seem to others like several lifetimes-performing as a collaborative pianist, occasional soloist, symphony bassist and, through it all he has remained a dedicated teacher. He took part in the first Taubman Institute at Rensselaerville, New York, and though he does not represent the Institute, he participated in many subsequent institutes at Amherst College while studying piano privately in New York with Edna Golandsky, who showed him that there are no mysteries regarding piano technique. He has performed internationally with such artists as David Shifrin, Hermann Baumann, Eugenia Zukerman, Leona Mitchell, Clamma Dale and Christiane Edinger in venues from Vancouver to Boston and London to Moscow, including Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center, the White House, Vienna's Musikverein, Berlin's Hochschule and Tchaikovsky Hall in Moscow. He has played in the Great Performers at Lincoln Center series, the Berlin Festival, the Vienna Festival, Tage Neue Musik, Marlboro and the Newport Festival. His concertizing has taken him to every state in the contiguous United States. And yes, he has taught continuously. After graduating cum laude from the University of Southern California, a scholarship student of Muriel Kerr, Jacob Gimpel and John Crown, he accepted a Naumberg scholarship on double bass to the Juilliard School (M.S.), during which time he performed in the American Symphony with Leopold Stokowski (Columbia Records) and in the Marlboro Festival Orchestra with Pablo Casals (Columbia Records). It was also during this time that he made his New York recital debut at Carnegie Recital Hall as a pianist with violinist Christiane Edinger. Later, he studied piano on a German government grant with Gerhard Puchelt in Berlin, completed a doctorate in piano at the University of Arizona with Nicholas Zumbro and for thirteen years taught applied piano at the University of Texas at El Paso, where he was a tenured professor. He now teaches privately in Los Angeles, writes, paints, takes photos of the world around him and plays cello in the Santa Monica Symphony.
