Many students can improvise. Far fewer walk away with something they can hold onto. Let’s fix that - with Kevin Olson.

(Cancel anytime. No lock-in contracts.)

Great composers have always learned by studying the music around them, and in this creative, hands-on session you'll discover how musical models become the launchpad for student composition.

By the end of this spotlight session, you will:

• Understand the Borrow, Blend, Become framework and how it turns a student's rough idea into a piece they can keep, perform and share
• Know how to use musical models your students already love as a springboard for their own original writing
  
• Have practical activities you can run in your very next lesson to get students composing, not just improvising
• Be able to guide students past the "stuck" stage where improvising fizzles out, and on to a piece with a clear beginning, middle and end
  
• Walk away with strategies and resources to build composition into your teaching straight away, whatever your own composing experience

Included for TopMusicPro members

(Cancel anytime. No lock-in contracts.)

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Host

Tim Topham

Your host and founder of TopMusicCo, the world’s biggest online community of independent music teachers. Tim has 20+ years’ classroom and music teaching experience including 10 years of music entrepreneurship. He’s an internationally-recognised speaker, author, podcaster and blogger and holds degrees including an MBA, BMus and DipEd.

Presenter

Kevin olson

Kevin Olson is an active pianist, composer, and member of the piano faculty at Utah State University, where he teaches piano literature, pedagogy, and accompanying courses. In addition to his collegiate teaching responsibilities, Kevin directs the Utah State University Youth Conservatory, which provides weekly group and private piano instruction to more than 200 pre-college community students. The National Association of Schools of Music has recently recognized the Conservatory as a model for pre-college piano instruction programs. Before teaching at Utah State, he was on the faculty at Elmhurst College near Chicago and Humboldt State University in northern California.

A native of Utah, Kevin began composing at age five. When he was twelve, his composition, An American Trainride, received the Overall First Prize at the 1983 National PTA Convention at Albuquerque, New Mexico. Since then he has been a Composer in Residence at the National Conference on Keyboard Pedagogy, and has written music commissioned and performed by groups such as the American Piano Quartet, Chicago a cappella, the Rich Matteson Jazz Festival, Music Teachers National Association, and several piano teacher associations around the country.

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