Hello from Lorraine at the SE22 Piano School. We are loving being back in the piano studio in East Dulwich and we have been making lots of changes behind the scenes during lockdown.
A very warm welcome to our new musicians:
Ava, Azizan, Sophia, Hannah, Willow, Jan, Noah, Mikhael, Viva and Anne.
We’ve started enrolling new students for instruments other than piano as our team of teachers is a bunch of very talented multi-instrumentalists. I’m wondering if it’s time to rebrand as the SE22 Music School?! Did you know that Mirna teaches guitar, singing and violin? We also have a few spaces reserved for Year 5 students to prepare for the upcoming Music Scholarship entrance tests to state secondary schools. These can be booked on Eventbrite and spaces are limited during term-time but we will have much more availability in the school holidays.
We have a wonderful local gardener working on the front of the shop to add in some planters and bike storage. The bike and scooter storage will be ready shortly after the half-term break. You are welcome to leave items here at your own risk. Please bring a lock. Sabrina is based in East Dulwich and runs a company called Wolves in London that offers garden design and maintenance and also very lovely and reasonably priced houseplant boxes. I have lots of her plants at home and have just ordered some for the studio too.
June Instagram Competition
We are running an Instagram competition in June. Tag us in a photo of you scooting or cycling to your piano lesson and/or using the new storage racks and we will put your name in the hat to win an Oddono’s gift voucher. We are @se22pianoschool on Instagram.
Also here’s a peek at the courtyard garden – it’s looking simply stunning and it’s a very chilled-out space where the teachers enjoy eating our lunch and checking our emails.
This week’s big news is that we have donated the old digital piano to Westminster House Youth Club in Nunhead and a new upright piano from Piano Lobby is arriving next Tuesday. For those of you with upright pianos at home, it must have been several months, if not years, since you last tuned them so we recommend the following two local piano tuners:
Robert Parr ~ 07952 411156
AMH Pianos ~ https://www.tuningpianos.co.uk ~ 07385 124917
A few weeks ago I tentatively put a date in the diary for an end of year student music recital at our usual venue of St Barnabas Parish Hall in Dulwich Village. It looks like this will be able to go ahead now that indoor events are able to resume from May 17th so I’ve put the tickets on sale.
We are delighted to hold our end of year student music recital in person finally! All instruments welcome so if you play another instrument, please bring that along too and perform for us. Here is the event info and the ticket booking link.
Saturday 10 July
5.15pm – 6.30pm approx
St Barnabas Parish Hall in Dulwich Village
23 Dulwich Village, London SE21 7BT
All proceeds to Alzheimer’s Society.
Each performer needs a ticket which is priced at £10 per performer. Audience members may attend free of charge. All proceeds of this recital will go to the Alzheimer’s Society. I am fundraising for them this year as it is a cause very close to my heart as my dad suffers with dementia. You can read more about why I have chosen this charity here.
St Barnabas Parish Hall is a big venue with lots of seating so grab a chair when you arrive and please arrange your seating in your household bubble. Siblings of all ages welcome. We would like to film the concert and put this on YouTube as well as use some photos on our social media pages so please indicate if that is OK at the time of booking your ticket. You do not need to let us know which piece(s) you will play, you can decide this with your teacher nearer to the time of the event and then announce your pieces on the day. We will put together a running order which we will send by email on the 9th of July. Ticket sales will close on the 1st of July. We always do a group photo at the end but we do ask that if we do not have your permission to use this photo online then please stand out for the first photo and then the second group photo will be for you to take your own photos for personal use only. All performers will receive a medal of participation. The teachers will be awarding trophies to students that have been working hard during lockdown. These will be announced on the day!
For students working on Trinity Online Exams, here is the info you need to make your exam submission. We are anticipating that exams will take place soon in person but we will keep you updated about that. If you’ve sat any online exams during lockdown, please let us know your results and maybe even send us a photo of you with your certificate.
Welcome to new teacher Paul Evernden.
Paul is an experienced composer and multi-instrumentalist specialising in both the piano and clarinet. He has a PhD in Composition from King’s College London and is a founding member of the Eos ensemble which is dedicated to the little-known as well as the brand new.
He is an experienced teacher with more than a decade of working with children and young people from the age of 5 up, teaching privately, in primary and secondary schools across London, as well as for several of the capital’s leading music services. Paul has worked with children with SEN and has experience of teaching 1:1 as well as in small groups; he also teaches Theory for preparation for ABRSM exams.
In his free time, you might find Paul down by the river Thames in his native SE16 mudlarking.
