Occasionally, though, we have a student who becomes the real teacher as they demonstrate life lessons to us that we could never possibly learn on our own.
Such was the case for Ian Loeppky, author of “An Ear for an Eye: What I’ve Learned from My Blind Conducting Student.” Through his student, he was able to gain a fresh perspective of the conductor’s art. Some of his points include:
* Remind students that their eyes can deceive them and that touch/ feel is almost always more reliable than vision in musical matters.
* Encourage students to internalize and memorize music from a tactile perspective fi rst. Memorize where the climax of the phrase occurs by the way it feels rather than how it looks on the page.
* Get the score into your head so you can get your head out of the score. [Study] the music phrase by phrase, and learn to internalize these phrases tactilely rather than visually as much as possible.
* Remind students that score memorization is only difficult, not impossible.
• Encourage your young conductors to use their tactile sense whenever possible with their singers.
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Edward Palmer says