I want to be able to play The Great Gate of Kiev up to tempo with less than two mistakes. I can already do the other movements of the Pictures at an Exhibition, although some movements are slower than Chicago Orch. under Fritz Rheiner took them on LP in 1958.
I want to learn one of the two piano parts of the original Rhapsody in Blue. I want to find someone within the TARC service area (Louisville bus line) who wants to play the other part for fun, not for pay as a teacher would. I have two similar sounding pianos, and also a Hammond organ, so performing it in my house is doable, but nobody responds to my signs on the board at the university, here, etc. I could learn the Ira Gerswin part even, to make the learning easier.
I don't want to play two piano Rhapsody on a ******* Yamaha piano, it seems everybody competent has one, including every ******* teacher I know. The teachers can hire *****ese men as students if they have that much money to send out of the country and on to Iran for the oil, I'm not paying for that experience.
I want to fix the out of tune key on the Baldwin grand "plant stand" in the fellowship hall at a Presbyterian church in the next county, and play Pictures on it for the minister over there. I tried out the first movement while waiting for a concert two years ago, and the minister was very interested and invited me back any day. I went one time with my piano tools; they were having a meeting in the fellowship hall, and sorting brochures for mailing on the piano top. So I need to call before I go the next time - it is a 1.2 hour bus ride plus a 15 block walk each way.
I want to be able to slowly get through Lyapunov's Christmas Night by the end of next December. I want to play it , all the carols I can play, all the pop Christmas songs I know, and George Winston's Holly and the Ivy I already know, at the charity dinner downtown on a Saturday before Christmas. There is a nice sixties Baldwin Acrosonic console piano on stage. I went this year, but the cook team had brought their own piano player, so I'll have to go earlier than 12/21 next year. I did play the Saturday before Thanksgiving, but not Christmas music, just Pictures, the Thanksgiving hymns in the hymnal there (more than my home church), three Joplin rags, and some simple jazz arrangement. Nobody noticed, it was a pretty stress free performance.
I want to play ten or twelve Sunday services at the little church near my country property 27 miles out of town in the good weather. I live out there in summer to avoid the ozone in town. I want to make fewer mistakes. The elderly ladies are very appreciative of hearing the old hymns that I like playing, and don't complain about the mistakes. I hope the three of the ladies that like my playing are still there next year, they are in their eighties it seems. I want to tune the top 15 notes of the piano I didn't get to last year because I didn't have lights on my bicycle and it got dusk before I finished.
Topic: Your piano goals for 2015