MARCH 2006 NEWSLETTERDATE: March 21, 2006 PLACE: H&H Music, 713 FM 1960 W. TIME: 9:30 AM—Board Meeting 10:15 AM—CCMTA Meeting 11:00 AM--Program GUEST: Andrea Cannon PROGRAM: Teaching Guitar vs Piano: Similarities and Differences Our own talented member Andrea Cannon attended Berklee College of Music, where she majored in Guitar Performance with an emphasis on jazz. Her training includes classical guitar studies with Robert Guthrie, Christopher Parkening, and Judicael Perroy, as well as Suzuki Pedagogy training with Frank Longay, William Kossler and Dorothy Jones. She has been selected for Teacher Excellence Grants by the Suzuki Association, MTNA and TMTA. She is the only guitar instructor in the Southwest to have earned National Certification through MTNA. Andrea is a Registered Suzuki Guitar Teacher Trainer and travels nationally and internationally conducting clinics and workshops. She spent most of last summer doing just that and started off 2006 with a two-week teaching trip to Peru in January—more on that in an item below. She's in great demand, and we’re certainly fortunate to have her share with us her answers to such questions as what group playing experiences are possible with pianists, and how can we as teachers provide material for our students to perform with siblings. *************************************************************************** CALENDAR OF EVENTS
• Saturday, April 8—Spring Festival—Cypress Creek Christian Community Center (CCCCC)
• March 21st meeting--Grants-in-Aid entries to Chairman Sharon Goldsberry Member of the Year: Chairman JoAnne Griffith would like you all to be thinking about who you would like to see named Member of the Year and be ready to nominate that person from the floor at the March meeting. If there are multiple nominees, their accomplishments for the year will be printed in the April newsletter and a secret ballot will be taken at the April meeting, with the winner to be announced at the May Luncheon. Andrea Cannon’s Latest Travels: She spent two weeks in January at the 22nd Suzuki Festival in Lima, Peru, where she taught Training Courses for teachers: Suzuki Guitar School, Unit 2, Teaching Strategies (a Practicum Course), and Suzuki Guitar School, Unit 1. A total of 33 teachers participated in the courses. In addition, she taught 42 students and improved her ability to speak and understand Spanish. In fact, during the Festival, she began to speak to the children in Spanish some of the time. The young man assigned to be her interpreter asked her to please speak English when the reporters came in with video cameras. At first she thought it was to not embarrass the sponsors of the Festival that an American was using such bad Spanish with the children. But he said, "No, the Spanish is pretty good. I'm afraid they will see it and wonder why they are paying me to translate for you." She did manage to do a bit of sight-seeing for one day. They went on a boat trip around an island in Paracas where there is a colony of sea lions and millions of birds (including penguins!) Then they went to Nazca and flew over to view the famous and mysterious Nazca lines. She has some links and lots more details in her Travel Log at www.xanga.com/HoustonGuitarGal She reports that it was a wearying schedule overall, but the reward of helping those teachers become more determined and focused toward their profession made it all worthwhile. Results of District Performance Contest Announced: The competition level for the TMTA District Performance Contests at Baylor University on Saturday, March 4 was once again very much on the stiff side. Even so, CCMTA took the starring role as the association with the most overall winners in the district for the 2005-2006 season. We are proud to announce the following CCMTA winners (unranked and alphabetized) and alternates:
Congratulations to all students and teachers. You make CCMTA proud! Furthermore. . . New member Dorothy Foster, who teaches piano, organ and composition, has room for more students at her Cypress studio. Call her at 281-256-2105….We have always known that we have an excellent website curator in Luke Spence, and he’s proven it once again. He just solved a long-standing problem Andrea Cannon had trying to access our website. Nobody else, including her server, could find the problem, and she was paying a proxy internet service $4.95 a month to get on the website anonymously (that’s how much our website means to her—take note!) Luke kept after the problem until he found an obscure technicality responsible. Thank you Luke! |