Seeing as Valentine’s Day is drawing near, allow me to present this clip of yours truly playing Dream a little dream of me. The lyrics are displayed below. Songs like this one are all about romance—and I love it. Not the “let’s get the sex part going” kind of thing, nope. And a kiss is the most romantic thing between two lovers, period. Enjoy, and Happy Valentine’s Day.

Stars shining bright above you;
Night breezes seem to whisper “I love you.”
Birds singing in the sycamore tree.
Dream a little dream of me.

Say nighty-night and kiss me;
Just hold me tight and tell me you’ll miss me.
While I’m alone, blue as can be,
Dream a little dream of me.

Stars fading but I linger on, dear—
Still craving your kiss.
I’m longing to linger till dawn, dear,
Just saying this…

Sweet dreams till sunbeams find you—
Sweet dreams that leave all worries behind you.
But in your dreams, whatever they be,
Dream a little dream of me.

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It’s that time of year once more and yours truly was again at the helm of the piano to accompany the E & O Nightingales singing Christmas carols  for the lighting of the Christmas Tree at the hotel lobby. By the way, December here started out not with snow, but with an enormous thunderstorm just before the event started. Here’s one of my pictures.

Here’s my piano and keyboard setup, a Korg PA-50 on top of the piano. I used the Korg most of the time, because the noise levels were extremely high and the piano couldn’t be heard.

General Manager Michael Saxon (my boss) gave his opening speech, and then Miss Mazeta conducted the E & O Nightingales for the singing of the Christmas carols. Yes, the choir was comprised of only ladies this year, but they sang their hearts out and I was very proud to have accompanied them. And word is that they will be doing some occasional caroling in the hotel between now and Christmas.

Up and coming violinist Koay Zhi Tong captivated and impressed the audience with two Christmas carols played on her electric violin. Zhi Tong was also a finalist in this year’s Piano Idol. This young lady’s one to watch!

And finally just when I was finishing my dinner, the E & O Nightingales came by for theirs, so the end result was me (the thorn huh) taking a photo with them. Well done, ladies!

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Alright, I confess—maybe it was that sojourn at the Coffee Bean last week that triggered the sentimentalist in me. After listening to them playing all those Christmas songs sung by the likes of Bing Crosby, Doris Day, Judy Garland, Nat King Cole, etc. I emerged feeling a wee bit woozy, but it was a nice, warm feeling inside me (and yeah, maybe the Ice Blended Coffee contributed to it too) Anyways, what better way to express it or let it out but through music, and so here’s my own personal recording and arrangement of Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas. This song was first sung by Judy Garland in the 1944 MGM musical Meet Me in St. Louis. The lyrics were criticized as being too depressing in its original draft, so songwriter Hugh Martin made several changes. Here are the tweaked lyrics, in case you want to sing along with my playing:

Have yourself a merry little Christmas,
Let your heart be light
From now on,
our troubles will be out of sight
Have yourself a merry little Christmas,
Make the Yuletide gay,
From now on, 
our troubles will be miles away.
Here we are as in olden days,
Happy golden days of yore.
Faithful friends who are dear to us
Gather near to us once more.
Through the years 
We all will be together,
If the Fates allow
Hang a shining star upon the highest bough.
And have yourself A merry little Christmas now.

 

I recorded all the backing tracks myself, putting in a sad muted trumpet first, followed by another solo trumpet. And I have another confession to make—I had actually wanted to modulate a half-step higher near the end, from C major to C sharp major. But as I was recording it, I detoured to A flat major instead. It sounded different but I liked it, so I left it in. Hope you enjoy this performance of mine.

If you’d like to listen to my piano-only version, it’s online here.

May the coming Christmas season fill all our hearts with love, peace, and joy.

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Yup, that’s the title of a Pet Shop Boy’s song (and very nice it is too) and that’s precisely what I did today—I just slipped into a state of vegetation. Well I still had to log on the Net (this is like oxygen to me), I folded my clothes (but did absolutely no ironing—I am not permitting that sordid torture on myself today), I did my usual morning walk and swim, cooked the rice and leftovers…but aside from that, did nothing else. And I don’t feel a single strand of guilt coursing through my veins. Nope, in fact I feel good, hee hee.

The only bit of work I did was thinking (only thinking, mind you) about moving or consolidating my website into a brand new blog. Nothing concrete yet, just throwing some ideas back and forth; thinking, thinking. This was a day where my mind just flatly refused to do anything much. It always happens like that to me on Mondays, and the reason is because on Sundays I do some intense teaching. Don’t believe me? Go ask the victims, LOL I mean my students. Lest anybody thinks that teaching piano is kid’s stuff, it is most definitely not!! Perhaps I’ll expound about this further in my new blog.

Typing this out on my Dell laptop as usual Love Windows 7, it’s working great so far. Maybe I’ll upgrade my desktop after the New Year…OK, that’s enough work on this blog post, let me go bore myself—only 4 more hours before Monday ends and then it’s back to a normal state for me.

P/S Just stumbled on this article in realage.com: Happy and Healthy: Go Ahead, Goof Off Today. I feel even better now!

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G: Gratitude, Gifts

“Gratefulness is the key to a happy life that we hold in our hands, because if we are not grateful, then no matter how much we have we will not be happy—because we will always want to have something else or something more.” Brother David Steindl-Rast

“Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all the others.” Cicero

“The hardest arithmetic to master is that which enables us to count our blessings.” Eric Hoffer

“To speak gratitude is courteous and pleasant, to enact gratitude is generous and noble, but to live gratitude is to touch Heaven.” Johannes A. Gaertner

“Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos into order, confusion into clarity…. It turns problems into gifts, failures into success, the unexpected into perfect timing, and mistakes into important events. Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today and creates a vision for tomorrow.” Melodie Beattie

“If the only prayer you said in your whole life was "thank you," that would suffice.” Meister Eckhart

Because of my Christian upbringing I was always taught to be thankful for all the things that God has bestowed upon us. I am glad for this, because I have found out that when the storms of life hit you at full force, gratitude might not be the first thing you think about, but trust me, it’s an absolute life-saver. Being thankful has helped me sail through those turbulent waters that come my way…and I am stronger because of it.

Yes, no doubt it’s hard to be grateful in this materialistic world that we live in—always wishing I had a bigger car, a bigger house, a nicer stereo, a newer Yamaha Clavinova (hee hee), more money, etc. I’ve learnt my lesson—not to give in to this, because God gives us just what is enough…and then some. Blessings are not tied only to material and worldly things. I am thankful for my health (especially my eyes!), my family and relatives, my friends, etc. I wake up each day and I say a humble thank you to the Lord for another day. I go to bed every night and I say the same thing again. A thankful heart is a happy heart.

I will always remember and treasure this little nugget of wisdom someone told me when I was a young boy: “I used to complain that I didn’t have any shoes to wear, until I saw a person who had no feet.”

This video called The Miniature Earth always has me choked up. Watch it, and be thankful, my fellow readers. God bless you all.

“Life is a gift, and it offers us the privilege, opportunity, and responsibility to give something back by becoming more.” Anthony Robbins

“God gave you a gift of 86,400 seconds today. Have you used one to say "thank you?" William Ward

“Yesterday is history. Tomorrow is a mystery. And today? Today is a gift. That’s why we call it the present.” Babatunde Olatunji

“Everyone is gifted—but some people never open their package.” Unknown

For me my gift is music, particularly playing the piano. The best part I feel, is when I share this gift out with others. Whether it’s teaching the piano to students, or playing the piano at the hotel…’tis a joy. And there are also many other gifts that we all have…the gifts of kindness, gratitude, and compassion, to name a few. These gifts reside inside us—it’s up to each one of us to decide whether to allow them to come out from within our souls.

I’m also not going to deny not liking physical gifts. After all, I gave myself a birthday present not too long ago. However, the most wonderful gifts don’t require money to buy, and that’s why they are so special—a gift of friendship, a gift of love, a gift of caring…ah, it just warms my heart!

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September was a glorious month for me. Here are the highlights:

• Bought my birthday present (the Canon PowerShot SX120 IS) way ahead of schedule. Yes, I was naughty, so what?
• The Piano Idol finals at the Copthorne Orchid Hotel—it was the second time I was asked to judge, and I was very pleased with the overall standards. Will there be a third time for me? Dunno.
• The BBQ gathering at the Pau’s residence was awesome. Lots of food and drink and nice company.
• My 49th birthday of course, on September 26. And the crème de la crème was spending a night at the E & O Hotel, coupled with an unforgettable buffet breakfast the next morning. What a blast! Er…Mike, if you’re reading this–can I do it again, soon?

Now here comes October (or what’s left of it, almost halfway through) and—blech, nada, nothing much happening. There are peaks and there are valleys, I suppose. Here are some “exciting” things (yes, I’m being sarcastic here, hee hee) that I’ve been doing to keep myself preoccupied:

• Relearning some classical pieces from the past. See this post.
• I’m still contemplating about giving my website a total makeover. It’s beginning to fill with cyber cobwebs and someone said it’s high time I gave it a good spring-cleaning.
• I’m trying to get my blog-writing juices running again. Hopefully this post is a sign of more stuff to come.
• Bought Avira’s Antivir Premium antivirus locally. Pretty decent price ($13 USD) for a 13-month license. I’ve also downloaded and installed Microsoft Security Essentials (MSE) which is a neat antispyware program. It’s free and except for a strange quirk (which I’ll explain in a later post) I like it.
• Christmas rehearsals for the lighting of the Christmas Tree at the hotel are due to start this Friday October 16th. Time flies.
• Catching up with some of the current movies. I prefer to watch them on DVD because I despise the censorship in the cinema halls. Some movies I’ve watched and enjoyed include: State of Play, Obsessed, 12 Rounds, The Taking of Pelham 123, Terminator Salvation, and Star Trek. The last one is simply amazing—I’ve been a Trekkie all my life and J.J. Abrams did an excellent job with the retelling. Looking forward to the sequels!

So there you have it. Aside from eating my oats, doing my laundry, having leftovers for lunch, paying the monthly bills (ugh), teaching students, I lead a pretty exciting life huh. Until the next post, this is Philip, signing off.

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Being a piano teacher of classical music and a cocktail pianist allows me to have one foot in each camp. I’ve been teaching piano for over 25 years now, but one of my philosophies has always been this:

If you want a student to do something, you have to be able to do it yourself.

Nowhere is this more true than in the realm of practicing the piano. It’s easy to dish out orders to your students when you’re “in command”—things like “Play with more feeling please,””Could you bring out the right-hand melody?””You ought to practice more carefully” etc., etc.

I teach mainly the ABRSM (Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music, UK) Piano syllabus, so students do the usual scales, exam pieces, aural, and sight-reading. Modesty aside, I have prided myself on being able to do what I ask my students to do. So when it comes to choosing exam pieces, we pick them and then agree on both of us learning them. Then I do some practice on the pieces myself, so that I can show the student what I want. I’ve always tried to be hands-on, Lord knows how many times I’ve asked students to get up from the piano bench and plunked myself down on it.

OK, that’s the usual stuff, but lately I’ve been digging up some past repertoire and asking myself “Hey, when was the last time I tried out this piece?” Over the years I’ve been playing so much jazz and standards that regrettably, I’ve left the classical stuff behind. I haven’t abandoned it totally—nope. And I still have a humongous collection of classical CDs that gets played in my car. It was only after this year’s Piano Idol that I decided it was high time I revisited this old friend.

So I dug out some old repertoire. I’ve started with my regimen of scales and Hanon exercises, followed with repertoire like:

• J.S. Bach: Prelude and Fugue No. 5 from the Well-Tempered Clavier, volume 1
• W.A. Mozart: Sonata in G major, K283
• Chopin: Fantaisie Impromptu
• Ravel: Prelude from Le Tombeau de Couperin
• George Gershwin: 1st Prelude

And guess what? I’m having a whale of a time! I haven’t touched these five pieces for years and years but when I started on them, it was like, “Wow! Good to see you again!” Unlike Jazz and popular music, everything on the page has to be strictly followed, which is why I sometimes think playing classical music is like living in a military camp. Be that as it may, I’ve got to try to play out the composer through the music, doing the proper technique and all the stuff that I’ve been telling and imploring my students to do over the past decades.

My Yamaha Clavinova digital piano has been my faithful ally, since it has the touch of a grand piano, never goes out of tune, and most importantly allows me to record my performances on the spot. This is great because I can play it back immediately and spot my mistakes (I have to be able to criticize myself too). So there you have it. Now excuse me while I go back to play the piano. Ciao for now!

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