Here’s one of my favorite pieces – Rachmaninoff’s Etude Tableaux, Op. 39, No. 5. I played this at the end of one of my student’s recitals, while I was teaching at the Academy of the Arts at Perimeter Church. The video was recorded on analog tape, so the quality is not so great. This is a piece I started learning at about the time I started getting intensely serious again about the piano, while I was in my mid to late 40’s. I probably started working on it sometime in 2005 or 2006, before starting piano lessons with Mrs. Nancy Arnold, now retired. I set the piece aside for awhile after beginning lessons with her, and then finally resumed study of it with her after a year or two, and eventually performed it here for my own students in 2008. As I look back now on my recording of this piece, it’s fascinating for me to see and hear all the little things I was doing incorrectly, but I do believe that the passion was definitely there, even then!

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Below is a recording of a suite of pieces – Danzas Argentinas – by Alberto Ginastera. I played this for one of my first collegiate recitals, in Spring of 2010, shortly after returning to college in 2009. This was recorded in the recital hall at Georgia Perimeter College in Clarkston, GA. I studied this piece with the wonderful Dr. Ginger Chen. I always loved this suite of pieces. Just so very fun and exciting to both play and listen to! And I believe one can see a definite improvement in my technique here, just two years after the recording of the Etude Tableaux.