Welcome to the tonebase Piano Community!

Hi everyone - I’m John from Oak Park, California (Ventura County near Thousand Oaks).   I’m a true foodie, so my food tastes are eclectic, but if I HAD to pick a fav it would be Italian.   

Currently I’m working on Schubert’s B flat major sonata (D960) and love every minute of it!   Will I ever say it’s ‘finished’, probably not as it keeps on getting better and better.   It’s all about the process.   I’m also working on Brahms Rhapsody Op 119/4, ballade Op 118/3, and Intermezzo Op 117/1.   I think these pieces combined make a nice grouping played in ballade/intermezzo/rhapsody order.  I’m also always trying to maintain a “go to” repertoire for those impromptu moments when someone says, ‘Hey John, play something for us’ and would love to hear suggestions from all of you as to how you keep up your repertoire.  

I love playing chamber music, and piano duets and duos, so if anyone out there lives close to me and would like to “jam” please reach out.   

I would like to know how to reach out to other members and the Tonebase staff with questions about specific pieces and get your opinions.   Here’s my first question.  In the Chopin Impromptu Opus 36/2 do the fast scales beginning at measure 82 have to be played in tempo with the beginning of the piece or can they be taken down in tempo slightly?   

I look forward to getting to know you and participating in the community.   

Hello! I'm Sofia.

I'm from Florida, and to me, nothing beats fresh-caught grilled snapper with a squeeze of lemon.

I am currently working on Chopin's Scherzo Op. 20 No. 1 and Etudes Op. 10 Nos. 1, 5, and 9, and Rachmaninoff's Prelude in C-sharp minor. I hope to start the second and third movements of the Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata (I already know the first), and maybe the third of his Tempest Sonata, or perhaps Fantasie-Impromptu once I have the Etudes and Scherzo down. I also really need to work on my sight reading. For me, memorizing music and technique is a piece of cake. And sight reading mere minuets in tempo is not. I'm just glad that Tonebase and my other teacher plays to my strengths and helps me get better at sight reading simultaneously, because if it was just sight read sight read sight read I'd go insane.

I’m really excited to be part of a community of pianists who love classical music as much as I do, and share our enthusiasm for the musical world. I think it will help me grow as a pianist and as a person.

~ Sofia

Hi, I'm Mark

• Where are you from and what's your favorite food from there? ;)
  • I'm from Bristol (UK), a vibrant and culturally rich city in the southwest of England, where I've lived for the past almost 40 years. (I'm originally from Northampton, but the less said about that, the better.) We (me, my partner and our daughter) have been vegan for the past few years, so there's not much of a regional culinary tradition that fits this, but I will give a big shout out to the many excellent vegan restaurants that we have in Bristol – this is one of the better places to be a vegan!
• What are you currently working on? 
  • I've been working a lot of 20th century music over the last year or two (Berg, Messiaen, Barber, Ireland, Prokofiev, (late) Debussy) and was feeling the need for a kind of reset. So I have just started learning the Beethoven Op.90 Sonata in E minor (a choice partly influenced by seeing Daniel Shapiro's excellent tutorial on Tonebase), alongside Bach's French Suite No.5 in G major. My teacher has suggested adding a big (in style rather than necessarily in scale) romantic piece to balance that off, so I'm currently trawling through Rachmaninoff's preludes, etudes, and morceaux to find something that appeals and that is remotely feasible for me to attempt (not a large intersection!)
• What are you hoping to get out of this community?
  • I'm a bit like Meg Ryan's fellow diner ("I'll have what she's having") – you guys all seem to be getting such a lot out of it and having such fun in the process, why wouldn't I want some of that too?
  • PS: It was lovely to meet some of you at Chetham's this summer – hope there'll be future opportunities to meet up in person.
  • PPS: Also, just to say I would have liked to have done something for the Halloween recital but it clashes with the Pianissimi weekend piano course. 

Hi all! 

Elated to be here in this group! I hope that financially I can remain here long term. I have been an avid follower of Tonebase and other instructional content, mostly on YouTube. I am 26 y/o, happily married with a month-old daughter. It has been a challenging journey from music school to the real world, learning how to support a family, and continue my love of music and working to improve my own education and practice. 

I live west of Boston in the Springfield area and my favorite food from here is probably the seafood. Maine lobstah

Since my last recital in March  I have been preparing for my next one hopefully in January. It is a Liszt/Schubert recital containing: 

• Liszt: Sonetto 104 Del Petrarca 
• Liszt/Schubert: Standchen
• Liszt/Schubert: Auf Dem Wasser Zu Singen 
• Schubert: Impromptu No. 3, Gb
• Liszt: Un Sospiro
• Liszt: Mephisto Waltz No. 1

It has been an increasingly difficult task understanding how to keep my pianistic abilities in shape whilst also working a full time teaching job, being a husband, and now a father. 

What I hope to get out of this program is quite a lot. Firstly, I want an opportunity to really improve my playing. I haven't had a formal teacher in four years, although I am a disciplined individual I would like some more formal direction. Secondly, I deeply desire to connect with other musicians, which again has been lacking since college. Lastly, I hope to learn specifically want I can do with my musicianship in accordance with my current stage of life. Overall it has been a somewhat lonesome and confusing time, in terms of my life as a musician.

Many thanks!