Alan Fraser's Piano Technique Blog

This week I have had the unexpected pleasure of a few days in Montreal, my home town, and the even greater pleasure of meeting with my old mentor Phil Cohen. He gave me a lesson and it was an exciting refresher course in everything he planted in me all those years ago. Many things were clearer to me now than then.

Phil has unique ways of thinking about and experiencing music performance, and transmitting that way in his lessons. The lessons look like physical choreography lessons at the keyboard. They make you feel like a total beginner again (some don’t like this). It’s like learning to walk all over again. But if you examine these choreographies more closely, the hidden musical intention begins to come to light.

Phil is always honing in on a musical aspect of a phrase: a rhythmic impulse point, the direction of the phrase, its peak, its resolution – how do you reach that peak, through one long line building to it or through a series of lilts upward? But instead of speaking only in those terms, he goes on, with his vision, to show you a choreography that exactly produces the desired musical phenomenon.

Many now speak about choreography but in all my travels worldwide I have never come across someone who does it with this particular brand of sophistication, exactitude and elegance. It’s Phil’s own unique expression of a highly refined musical intelligence, and to me it’s gold.

A lot of what I do in my own teaching and writing grows out of my years of experience with Phil. You could say mine is a watered-down version of his work, or you could see my work as an attempt to de-mystify what he does. I think I lose something in the process, but I also might reach many people who may be put off by the esoteric, looking-for-a-needle-in-a-haystack aspects of his brilliance.

In any case, it’s a rare privilege for me to have a few precious hours with the master, a humbling and inspiring experience.

AFF