A Returning Student – Now We Have our Quintet!

Kris, one of my former students has returned to South Florida and will be resuming studies. Kris earned a BA with a concentration in music and his MBA from Rollins College. After working for the Sewanee Summer Music Festival, Kris is now working as the Marketing Manager at eMerge Americas.

Kris had our first lesson in many years last night and I was impressed! He’s doing very well. Great sound and intonation. He reads very well. And, last but not least, he attributes his excellent skills to our earlier lessons! It’s nice to have validation of one’s teaching. 🙂

We played duets as a preliminary to getting his flute chops back up. Telemann, op. 5, no. 4, and Tara Theme and Arthur’s Theme from the Magic Duet Book. The latter two are great for practicing with a natural sounding relaxed vibrato. Then it was time for some serious work. We worked on the Charles Keller Divertissement no. 2. The Keller Divertissements are really neat little pieces of music – flutistic while sounding vocally inspired.

Two things we worked on were the position of the head joint and tongue placement. After playing for a bit, I had Kris push the head joint in a scooch to aid in facility of leaps and opening the throat. We also worked on pickup notes and the placement of the tongue on the roof of the mouth for the attack, rather than between the teeth. Getting the pickup note to be a pickup and in the character of the subsequent phrase is very improtant. 🙂

So now, with Kris, we (my adult students and I) have the option of playing quartets and quintets. What great fun!