Formats for Fred Karpoff's presentations are flexible. Options range from 50-minute lecture-demonstrations to multi-day residencies, often including one or more workshops and a solo recital.

WORKSHOP TOPICS INCLUDE:

• Changing Paradigms: Challenging Traditional Concepts of Piano Technique with Interdependence

  Following a career-threatening injury twenty years ago, Fred Karpoff began a holistic journey toward wellness that included work with a Feldenkrais practitioner and an overhaul of his piano technique with Yoheved Kaplinsky. Changing Paradigms is an interactive workshop that covers "interdependent" technique, beginning with foundational alignment and basic movements, and moving toward more advanced concepts, including scales, arpeggios, trills, and tremolos. Participants are challenged to acknowledge and question longstanding positions about how they play and listen. Karpoff's personal examples and demonstrations offer ways to immediately integrate natural, effective movement into practice and performance.

• Practicing Performing

  Musicians spend most of their practice time in a relaxed state, in activities that have little resemblance to the high-adrenaline experience of performance. Practicing Performing deals with vital but often neglected aspects of performance preparation to attain artistry that transcends the ordinary, drawing upon recent, dramatic advances in performance psychology for musicians. Participants come away with effective techniques and strategies to heighten confidence, comfort, joy, and commitment in performance. Designed for all musicians and teachers.

• Basic Three-Dimensional Piano Playing: Establishing Fluid Technique from the Beginning

  This presentation highlights innovative strategies for teaching organic movement to any student, taking the drudgery out of scales, arpeggios, and technical studies. Outstanding results can be achieved by teaching quality movement to students from the very first lessons. Many of us were taught technical rules that, in fact, limit fluid movement. Drawing upon the work of professional movement educators (e.g., Alexander Technique, Feldenkrais, Physical Therapy, etc.) we learn to encourage free motion throughout the whole body--to 'relearn' what we knew as children before socialization, peer awareness and other factors altered our patterns into less graceful 'habits'. At the piano, we can promote fluid, three-dimensional movement that inspires greater freedom and joy in playing.

• Learning Styles and Temperaments

  Karpoff relates the relationship of learning temperaments to increasing self-awareness and the teaching of music to aspiring musicians. Motivating and inspiring students of different learning styles can be very challenging for teachers. Insightful for teachers and musicians and of all levels and ages.

• A Journey Toward Wellness

  Abbreviated from the Changing Paradigms workshop, Karpoff recounts his experiences following a career-threatening injury. An inspiring tale of overcoming adversity, it includes many humorous anecdotes and his experience of the least and most helpful healing methods encountered. This leads into an abridged discussion of healthy piano technique and effective strategies for staying injury-free.

"It is wonderful when you have a teacher who can not only teach, but do"… "original and thoroughly convincing"… "wonderful musical insights and a complete understanding of the most natural and efficient way to play the piano"… "he worked with each one in a very personal way, leaving them with a special sense of accomplishment and something meaningful to take home"… "[creates] a positive and nurturing atmosphere where real learning can take place"… "gave students and teachers, alike, tools to use far beyond one playing experience!"

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LOCATIONS (partial listing):

• Liszt Hochschule für Musik, Weimar, Germany
• University of Oklahoma
• Bowling Green State University
• University of Cape Coast, Ghana
• University of Ghana-Legon (Accra)
• University of North Carolina at Greensboro
• Zimbabwe Academy of Music, Bulawayo, Zimbabwe
• University of Colorado at Boulder
• University of Maryland, College Park
• Northwestern University
• Hangzhou Teachers College
• University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point
• Eastman Summer Piano Festival
• Oklahoma State University
• Hangzhou Academy of Art and Foreign Language
• Roberts Wesleyan College
• University of Colorado at Denver
• Northern Arizona University
• State University of New York-Potsdam
• East China Normal University, Shanghai, China
• Susquehanna University
• Cornell University
• Nazareth College
• Metropolitan State College of Denver
• Rocky Mountain Amateur Piano Competition and Celebration, Colorado Springs
• Qianjiang College
• Albion College
• New York State Music Teachers Association Convention
• Numerous teachers' organizations throughout the United States

Berg: Piano Sonata, Op. 1