This workshop presents simple, concrete steps to incorporate mental, physical and technical ease into the music-making process. In a casual atmosphere, participants will learn how to: deflect intrusive thoughts, incorporate the senses to reinforce learning, feel technical ease, AND set up the Performance Schedule. These techniques are fully described in Margret’s book, Passionate Practice: The Musician’s Guide to Learning, Memorizing and Performing.

Who Should Attend: Music teachers, students at all levels of practice and performance, parents, anyone preparing for auditions or performance, and mental health professionals who work with artists and performers.

Margret Elson has dual careers as piano teacher
and psychotherapist. Early music education includes ten years as a
scholarship student at Juilliard Prep Division. In the San Francisco
Bay Area she studied with master teachers Alexander Libermann
and Marjorie Petray. In 1993 she and her piano partner Elizabeth
Swarthout received a National Endowment of the Arts grant to
produce the CD, Twentieth Century American 4-Hand Piano Music
(Laurel Record).

Margret has taught piano for over forty years, and has been a pioneer in wellness for the performing artist. She has been invited to present her unique work throughout the US, at international conferences and in London and Oslo. Most recently she presented at PAMA – Performing Arts Medical Assoc.

Margret’s book on optimum performance, Passionate Practice: The Musician’s Guide to
Learning, Memorizing and Performing presents many of the principles used.

Her most recent book The Couch and the Piano: Music and Psyche explores the
interrelationship between psychology and music through actual case studies of musicians
with whom Margret worked.
(For those curious about such things: Margret is a licensed psychotherapist in CA., has three
masters; two sons and one husband.)

Please register by January 7th, 2019 to secure a seat.