Jonathan Redrico

Bruce Cook
Piano Ensemble
15 December 2010
Post Evaluation Essay
This is my third semester at DVC studying in piano program, and I've grown in
many aspects as a musician. This year in particular, I've gotten much more comfortable in
public performance. It's an aspect that I've especially been focusing on these past few
months. All the exposure to playing in front of an audience in performance seminar and in
the advanced piano recitals have made me become familiar with what it feels like to be on
stage. The vulnerability of presenting your craft to a room of watching eyes and listening
ears has become a less intimidating experience. Compared to the beginning of the year. I've
gotten much better control over the anxiety that I used to feel, and it has been significantly
more comfortable to perform.
Another aspect that has helped me become more relaxed at the piano bench is a
greater kinesthetic familiarity with the keyboard. I remember back in August, one thing I
wanted to achieve was a physical "fluency" with playing piano. I wanted to play the piano
as comfortably as talking, as second nature as moving my lips. This semester, I made sure
to warm up with a few technical exercises at the start of every practice. This included a
variety of scale, arpeggio, and finger independence (Dohnanyi) exercise that gave me an
improved dexterity.
With this concentration on the mechanics of playing the piano, I was able to develop
better efficiency and a greater degree of control with my piano technique. An unexpected
development I've achieved this year was also a better musical understanding of harmonic

structure and phrase articulation. The insights that I've learned from my piano teacher and
the concepts I've worked with in music theory class have benefited greatly with achieving a
mental "fluency" in piano playing.
All these improvements have collectively helped me become quicker at sightreading, which is something that I wanted to get better at back in August. The most
effective way to become better at sight-reading, however, is to sight read even more. And
with all the opportunities accompanying in a local church and for the other musicians at
school, I've been able to (attempt to) sight-read on the spot numerous times this semester much more than I previously have.
Though, one challenge of piano playing that I think has not really improved this
semester is memorization. In fact, I think that focusing on sight-reading has made me even
more dependent on sheet music to play piano. Memorization has always been one of my
weakest aspects, even ever since I started playing at DVC, and I still think there is a lot of
room for improvement. I listed it as a challenge and a weakness back in August and it is in
the same place this December.
This next semester, I'd like to focus on strengthening my weak points, particularly
with memorization. I've found that actively keeping aware of the auditory, visual, and
kinesthetic senses while I'm practice is a very effective approach - as opposed to excessive
repetition as a way to hammer the music into muscle memory. Also, I would like to become
more efficient at learning new pieces so that I can build up my repertoire in a shorter
amount of time. I am thankful for all of the improvements I've seen this year and the
newfound familiarity I have for my instrument, but I am still mindful of the many areas that
I can improve on.