Pre-Collegiate Students and Chamber Music

[thomas_williams]

How many of you teachers provide opportunities for your private students to meet with others and play chamber music?  It has been my observation that classical piano students below the collegiate level (myself included) often do not have this opportunity, and it is desparately needed.  I want some thoughts on this-- do you or other teachers you know provide these opportunities for your students?  Have you considered starting local organizations to meet this need, perhaps in cooperation with other music teachers (who teach other instuments)?  Please post your thoughts here, and hopefully we can stimulate some activity in this vital field.

Sincerely,
Thomas

P. S.  I have also started a thread on this in Student's Corner (POLL: Local Chamber Music Organizations).  You may wish to post there if you have not already.  Here is the link:
https://www.pianoforum.net/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.cgi?board=stud;action=display;num=1077165547

[one_wing3d_ang3l]

every year my piano teacher who is da greatest pianist ever. (He even released his own album and met david helgott! wah tha ! he even composed his own piano concerto 3.) picks out all tha good students to perform on stage at assembly even tho the pieaces r so easy. Later on the principal makes a long 15 min speech talking about the talent in this school. wah a losty

[thomas_williams]

Does no one else have any comment?!?!?

[pianowelsh]

One of the biggest issues I have found is that much of the Duo and Trio repertoire is for the pianist often too taxing for a pre college student to bring off sufficiently well for performance! ANY repertoire suggestions may be helpfull here. Particularly in terms of piano trios. Young busy lives often can handle a zillion notes on top of their solo work and SCHOOL work. BUT i fully agree they should have the oppertunity to do more than often seems the case!! I wonder at the possibility of as a piano teacher contacting some string teachers and singing teachers locally and pairing up students of approx equal abilities! A logistical nightmare maybe but the possibilities are potentially GREAT.!!?!

[shasta]

When I was a kid, from ~14-18yrs old, I was a member of a chamber music society designed by all the music professors and orchestra members in my city solely for high school students. 

We were all extremely talented; competitive on stage, but friends for life off-stage.  We had a blast.  There were singers, string players, woodwinds, brass kids, harp, and pianists.  We would be grouped together randomly into duos, trios, quartets... based on our instrument, then assigned a piece.  We would perform in the museum downtown and in competitions.  Sometimes, if our little chamber music groups really meshed well, we would stick together and perform for churches and other events. 

Our own personal music instructors would coach us.  Our quality was quite high, and everyone was very serious.  Among the music performed, if I remember correctly, were the Mendelssohn trios, Cooke's Songs of Innocence, Schubert's Trout, Beethoven's Ghost, Schubert's Shepherd on the Rock, Debussy's petite suites, Bach cantatas...

I am a HUGE advocate for getting kids, tone-deaf or piano prodigy, involved in either chamber music or a choir of some sort.  The amount of musical development forged is incredible.  Listening skills, harmony, intonation, phrasing, jam-sessions, improv, sight-reading/singing...  PRICELESS.  Incidentally, nearly all of us in the chamber music society I described above were also members of our city's world-renowned/traveled children's chorus.