Suzuki Music Academy of Hong Kong
"Music Exists for the purpose of growing an admirable heart" ~Shinichi Suzuki
Congratulations to Ms. Monica and her students and parents!
Ms. Monica’s studio started our “recital season” off with a lovely recital that included performances from this year’s Twinkle parents, as well as students from Twinklers through Vivaldi…and even included a Twinkle graduation!
The experienced piano students had a wonderful opportunity this month: they performed on a Triolet Concert!
Catherine McMichael, a wonderful Suzuki piano teacher and composer, wrote string parts to use as accompaniment or chamber music with many of the pieces from the Suzuki piano repertoire. 
Mr. Jason decided which piece each student should play, and then KSMA purchased the music for all of the pieces. Together with Ms. Sandra and Ms. Diane, Mr. Jason and each piano student rehearsed their piece, getting used to the sound of the string parts together with the piano, as well as working on things like giving cues for beginning the piece.
On the day of the concert, all of the performers wore Chinese clothing, which made the performance even more festive!
The students and the audience all enjoyed the concert a lot…when is the next one?!
On Saturday, 21 January, Gareth and Marcus joined together to perform their Book 4/5 recital. Here are their thoughts after the experience!
By Marcus
This was my first time doing a recital with another person. It was fun to practice with my friend Gareth and learn from each other. It is not easy to be a good leader and a follower at the same time. Overall, I was quite pleased with my results as I just recovered from sickness and needed to catch up with more practices.
In this experience, I realise that it is very important to learn properly and practice slowly for any new piece. Otherwise, it is hard to correct mistakes.
I would like to thank Ms. Diane for organizing this event and all her valuable advice, thank Mr. Graham for his heartful teaching and as well for Ms. Sonomi to polish my solo pieces.
It was a great experience. I look forward to learn more new songs with my new teacher Ms. Ryoko and improve next time. Yeah!
~ Marcus Poon
by Gareth
This recital was pretty good after all, some parts were great but some parts still needed more improvement. We can improve our mistakes by practicing and listening to the piece, this will make us a better and skilled player. We needed a lot of practice to make us sound how we sounded in the recital and how we sound today. I know that both Marcus and I made some mistakes in the performance so we should both try to correct it. I would like to thank my parents, Ms. Diane, Mr. Graham and Ms. Sonomi for helping me and Marcus make our recital sound good. Starting from book 6, I will try to play as good as possible and practice a lot everyday. Overall, I thought that this recital was pretty good and hope that my next recital will be even better.
~ Gareth Au
January brought KSMA’s first-ever chamber music program concert!
Students have been working together with coaches Ms. Elizabeth, Mr. Graham, Mr. Jason, Ms. Monica, and Ms. Yuko since September. Some of what they have been working on are the skills that are part of being a member of a chamber group, which is very different from playing in an orchestra or group class.
At the beginning of the concert, Ms. Elizabeth and Ms. Monica talked a bit about all of the things on which the groups have been working, and had the students answer some questions.
In a chamber group, each person plays a different part, and all of the parts interact with one another. Every person is very important to the success of the experience of the whole group!
Please enjoy the students’ (and some coaches’) performances!
Congratulations to all of the students and coaches for their work! We are already looking forward to the next concert in May!
Ryan and Hermione recently performed their Book 3 recital together. Here is what they have to share with us about their experience:
by Ryan Cheng
This was my first recital pairing up with anyone. I had no idea how it would be like. Ms Monica didn’t tell me I would be facing 4 teachers but I still practiced a lot.
I felt it very boring and frustrating as I had to play various songs again and again. It really was hard to memorize 2 duets and 5 melodies at the same time! I hardly had any time to play. I know that I had around 3 – 4 weeks to work on it, but hey, who had more time than me? I bet a whole batch of students had. Anyway, I had most of the lessons polishing the minuet duet’s D section, so I had only 10-15 minutes on the other songs.
On the day of the recital, I was kind of nervous. Now I’m just happy as the recital has passed, and I’m able to learn other pieces of music in Book 4 and play again.
by Hermione Au
I was very nervous during my recital because this is the first time I have performed in front of soooooooo much people and it took me a long time to learn the duet a super hard at part F, that’s why I did not know how to play it, it was easy to learn part A, and it was easy because that was the first time I have done a duet, but I practised a lot of part A so it got easier. And the rest was easy, except I always forget about the repeats and it feels better to do my recital early so I don’t have to worry about it after I finish my book 3 recital and that’s all. I liked my Book 3 recital. It was very (super and great) fun. Best, super, very, 100 percent Book 3 Recital!
