May 2026 -- From Practice Room to Stage
INSIDE YUKIMI SONG STUDIO MAY 2026 EDITION
Happy Spring, dear Pianists and Piano Enthusiasts!
Back in February, we explored why piano technique is not optional—and how it shapes tone, physical ease, and long-term freedom at the instrument. You can revisit the February edition here: February Edition
This month, we turn to a different but equally important skill: preparing for live performance. We will explore how to prepare for recital day, why performing matters, and how great composers across eras create depth, emotion, and atmosphere in their music.
For many piano students—and our studio is no exception—May is a recital season for schools and piano studios across the U.S. From our youngest performers to our adult students, many are preparing for our upcoming annual recitals (we will host two this year). With the first recital now only weeks away, this is the perfect moment to think about how to prepare for a live performance—and why we choose to do it at all.
Why We Do Recitals
A recital gives music a purpose beyond the practice room. It encourages students to bring their playing to a more polished and presentable level, where practice becomes sharper, more focused, and more intentional.
It also offers something deeper: a real sense of accomplishment after sustained effort, the feeling of belonging within a musical community, and the joy of sharing something meaningful with others.
Just as importantly, performing teaches focus, resilience, communication, and the courage to be seen through music.
🎯 Technique Tip: How to Prepare for a Live Recital
Many students practice pieces repeatedly, but rarely practice performing. These are related skills, but they are not the same.
A performance asks for continuity, communication, and calm under pressure. That means learning how to begin, recover from mistakes, and continue with presence.
🚀 Your May Practice Challenge: 2–3 Run-Throughs This Week
Try the following full recital simulation two or three times this week:
Walk to the piano with calm confidence.
Say your name, your profession or background, and one sentence about your piece or composer. If you are unsure what to say, ask your teacher and come up with something together.
Adjust the bench: check the height and distance.
Take one slow breath.
Play the piece through without stopping.
If mistakes happen, keep going.
If you lose your place, pause and restart gracefully.
You can record the entire process on video or a voice memo.
Listen back kindly and note what improved and what needs work.
Additional Tips:
Take a look at the notes you made from your recording and practice the spots where mistakes happened.
Practice at a slower tempo than your performance tempo to build control and confidence.
Practice without the pedal to improve clarity, balance, and finger connection.
Practice hands separately when coordination feels unstable.
Ask your instructor for help overcoming difficult spots and performance concerns.
If you practice in a small space on a smaller digital piano or keyboard, ask friends who have an acoustic piano—or consider renting practice time on one—to experience a different touch and sound.
Ask your instructor if you may practice on their piano when possible.
Invite friends or family members to be your audience and perform for them before recital day.
Ask yourself:
Did I keep going?
Was the tempo steady?
Did I communicate the character of the music?
Where are the weak spots that need attention?
The goal of a recital is not perfection. It is to share music publicly with courage.
📝 YOU ARE INVITED!
Join pianist-arranger Eleonor Bindman and Yukimi Song for a vibrant afternoon of four-hand piano music at The Old Stone House.
This special live program celebrates the brilliance, charm, and orchestral power of piano duet repertoire in an intimate setting.
Program
• J.S. Bach – Brandenburg Concerto No. 6, BWV 1051 (arr. Bindman)
• J.S. Bach – Orchestral Suite No. 2, BWV 1067 (arr. Bindman)
• W.A. Mozart – Sonata in C Major, K. 521
• Carlos Gardel – Por Una Cabeza
🎟️ Reserve tickets online here, or pay cash at the door on the day of the concert.
Come enjoy timeless music, spirited collaboration, and the joy of piano duets.
📝 Composer Spotlights — May 2026
For this month’s composer spotlights, I chose Florence Price as our historical figure and Karen Tanaka as our contemporary voice. At first glance, they may seem far apart: one rooted in the 19th-century Romantic tradition, the other a living composer known for modern color and atmosphere.
Yet both reward patience, subtle listening, and emotional depth.
Price often creates richness through melody, rhythmic vitality, and harmonic warmth. Tanaka often creates meaning through space, resonance, and luminous texture. Both remind us that piano music does not need spectacle to move us deeply.
Placed side by side, they invite us to hear how emotional power can emerge through warmth or through stillness.
🎼 Historical — Florence Price (1887–1953)
Born on April 9, Florence Price occupies a singular place in American music history: a composer who absorbed the European classical tradition while forging an unmistakably American voice shaped by Black musical idioms, vernacular dance rhythms, hymn textures, and lyrical immediacy. She was also the first Black woman to have a symphony performed by a major U.S. orchestra.
Her piano writing unites craft with personality. Formal clarity coexists with rhythmic vitality, harmonic warmth, and melodic directness. One hears not imitation, but synthesis: Romantic inheritance transformed through lived cultural experience.
For adult pianists, Price offers something invaluable. Her music can be intellectually satisfying without being academic, expressive without excess, and technically approachable while still artistically substantial. She reminds us that sophistication and accessibility need not be opposites.
In Today’s Piano World
Florence Price’s piano music has gained significant visibility in recent years. Her works now appear regularly on recital programs, university stages, recordings, and student performances.
I recently interviewed pianist Han Chen on The Piano Pod, who received a Grammy nomination for his recording featuring Price’s Piano Concerto. Explore my recent conversation with Han Chen:
I also spoke with composer-pianist Joe Williams (Sound Liberator), a contributor to The Cambridge Companion to Florence Price, whose upcoming June episode explores her keyboard music and legacy.
Listening Suggestions:
Fantasie Nègre No. 1 in E minor
Fantasie Nègre No. 4 in B minor
Piano Sonata in E minor
Piano Concerto in One Movement
Three Little Negro Dances
The pieces are listed in this month’s Spotify playlist. Scroll down to find the button!
🎧 Contemporary — Karen Tanaka (b. 1961)
Japanese composer Karen Tanaka is known for music of color, atmosphere, stillness, and luminous texture. Her piano works invite deep listening and sensitivity to sound.
Where Florence Price often speaks through melody, rhythmic vitality, and warm lyricism, Tanaka often creates meaning through space, resonance, and clarity.
Placed beside Price, Tanaka reminds us that emotional expression can take many forms: through songful lines and dance energy, or through stillness, color, and carefully shaped sound.
Listening Suggestions:
Techno Etudes
Crystalline
Children of Light
Love Song
The pieces are listed in this month’s Spotify playlist.
🎹 Piano Fun Fact — The Bösendorfer Imperial Grand Piano (From Roberta Flack to the Concert Stage)
One of the many hats I wear is creator and executive producer of The Piano Pod—a YouTube, podcast, and live platform connecting artists, ideas, and audiences through meaningful conversation. Because of that work, I often receive messages about unique piano-related opportunities and cultural happenings.
Just today, I received an email about an upcoming benefit auction for the Roberta Flack Foundation featuring Roberta Flack’s personal Bösendorfer Imperial concert grand piano. For anyone who loves music history, piano culture, or Flack’s extraordinary legacy as both a singer and a pianist, this is remarkable news. Her songs continue to transcend generations. You can read more about the auction here.
The Bösendorfer Imperial is famous for its extra keys below the standard piano range. While most pianos have 88 keys, the Imperial has 97.
Why add extra bass notes?
Originally, the expanded range supported large transcriptions and orchestral sonorities. Even when those extra keys are not played, they vibrate sympathetically, enriching the instrument's resonance.
Many pianists describe the sound as almost orchestral—dark, spacious, and powerful.
I know that deep sound well these days, as I have been rehearsing four-hand repertoire with Eleonor Bindman on her own magnificent Bösendorfer Imperial at her home studio in Brooklyn—truly a beautiful beast of an instrument.
I also recently interviewed German composer-scholar Michael Ostrzyga on The Piano Pod. His striking solo piano album Perseus—named after the Perseus galaxy cluster in outer space—was recorded on a Bösendorfer Imperial, whose vast resonance and deep bass colors helped shape the album’s sonic world.
In our conversation, Michael explained that the title work, Perseus, was inspired by NASA recordings of sound waves from the Perseus galaxy cluster, shifted many octaves upward so humans could hear them. The Bösendorfer’s extended low register made it an ideal instrument for imagining that cosmic depth. Learn more in my recent interview with Michael Ostrzyga:
🎶 Listening Focus for May
This month’s playlist includes piano works by Florence Price and Karen Tanaka, along with Michael Ostrzyga’s Perseus, featuring pianist Christoph Schnackertz performing on the Bösendorfer Imperial.
As you listen this month, notice:
How repeated listening reveals new details over time
How Price creates depth through melody and rhythmic character
How Tanaka creates atmosphere through color and space
How silence can be as expressive as sound
There is no right or wrong response—only deeper listening. Let me know what you think about the pieces in the playlist:
Closing Thought
Progress at the piano is rarely linear, especially for adult learners. Depth often comes not from doing more, but from staying present with fewer things.
Thank you for being part of this studio community.
With love,
Yukimi