I recently purchased some new music you might be interested in exploring with your students this year.
Firstly, have a look at The Virtuosic Performer. Just about all the pieces in Book 2 were fantastic and around Grade 2-3 level. Many of them sound and look amazing, but are actually quite easy to learn and perform. I particularly liked “Dance of Fire”, “Moonlit Evening” and “The Masked Horseman” – great for your boys!
 look inside |
The Virtuosic Performer, Book 2 By Margaret Goldston. For Piano. Piano Collection; Piano Supplemental. Intermediate; Late Intermediate. Book. 24 pages. Published by Alfred Music Publishing (AP.16509)  (1) …more info |
Eric Baumgartner’s Jazz Connection series is also a great one to have on hand for students who like the jazzy-style pieces. Book 1 is Prelim/Gd 1 level and I loved “Funkasaurus” (great name!), “Easy Does It” and “Roadhouse Rock”. By Book 3, the pieces are really quite hard, but well worth checking out.
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Jazz Connection, Book 1 – Book Only (Nine Jazzy Solos/Later Elementary Level). By Eric Baumgartner. Willis. Late Elementary. Softcover. 24 pages. Willis Music #12552. Published by Willis Music (HL.406702)  (2) …more info |
Imprints is a great collection of solos by Chris Goldston. Check out “Castilian Evening”, “Silent Noon” and “At Twilight”, which were my faves. They are listed as “Early Intermediate” – around Grade 2-3 level.
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Imprints By Christopher Goldston. For Piano. Piano Collection; Piano Supplemental. Early Intermediate. Book. 24 pages. Published by Alfred Music Publishing (AP.14662)…more info |
Toccatina by Susan Ogilvy is a great fun piece with fun rhythms and lots of chords that boys are sure to love.
 look inside |
Toccatina By Susan Ogilvy. For Piano. Piano Solo; Solo. Form: Toccata. Early Intermediate. Sheet. 4 pages. Published by Alfred Music Publishing (AP.3617) (2) …more info |
Carly McDonald says:
I’ll take a look at those! Always on the look out for new material!
Speaking of gathering material, how do you keep track of everything you have? I’m forever trying to remember what book a song was in, or whether or not I have a certain book. Surely there is some sort of system out there to help with sheet music organisation?
timtopham says:
Hrmmm… good question and sorry it’s taken a while for me to reply! I don’t really have any set system but I do use OneNote (Windows software) to keep track of some of the really good pieces and which books they are in. OneNote is software that works just like paper notebooks and is great because it’s completely searchable, so if you can remember the name of a song, it will find any reference to it in any notebook or page. Pretty useful! Good luck for the start of term 🙂
Jenny Lang says:
Thanks for the suggestions. There seems to be so much interesting music written for students once they have reached a preliminary/grade one level.
Any thoughts on repotoire to keep it really interesting right from the first lesson as a beginner?
timtopham says:
Hi Jenny. I’m a huge fan of Chris Norton’s American Popular Piano series. It sounds a bit wierd, but is brilliant for getting kids mucking around and improvising at an early stage. It also has great backing music. I also like the P Plate Piano series (I just pick out the ones I like from each of the books, but there are some real gems in there). Also check out my post on “repertoire for boys” as I have a big list of the stuff I use for beginners there. Hope that helps!
Jenny Lang says:
Excuse my last post. That should be
‘repertoire’
(too much late night typing!!)