Christopher Norton at the Centre for Life
Newcastle, 23rd July 2008

This workshop, held at the very impressive Centre for Life in the refurbished Newcastle city centre, was the first one that the music shop J G Windows had ever put on, so they were interested to see how it went! A group of around 20 teachers came and it was a presentation on Chris' new American Popular Piano series, with lots of participation from an ever more willing audience! The readability, instant appeal and ease of use at the early stages of this course of study was commented on and the unique way of teaching improvisation was also of great interest.

Teachers find it hard to imagine moving to a new core series, so the components had to be explained clearly – learning to play the piano really well, lots of sight-reading and ear-training, repertoire that children will like and that they can choose. All of these elements began to convince some of the audience that this might be one of the few really new ideas to come on the market in some time.

Microjazz and Preludes series were also showcased and it became clear that the existing materials and the new materials can work very happily together.

www.christophernorton.com
www.jgwindows.com
www.americanpopularpiano.com