Introducing Charlottekies.com
I’d like to in introduce my first professional website, charlottekies.com! The sole purpose of my site is to introduce myself as a performer and music educator to my community.
I built this site to connect with current and future students, and to present myself as a performing clarinetist. I wanted to create a platform with which my students can actively engage.
My site is an open book—literally
A feature of my website is my resources page, which will be a platform on which to post excerpts from the book I am writing this summer. As part of an ongoing project, I have begun to transcribe exercises and practice methods and routines that I have absorbed from my own teachers over the past sixteen years. I wanted to diversify my personal daily warm-up routine, so I began to remind myself of all the ways my teachers had instructed me to warm up in the past. What started as a personal self-improvement activity has developed into a much larger pedagogical project.
In addition to the transcriptions of verbally relayed warm up routines, I have added some of my own warm up routines that I have tailored over the years to suit my unique warm up needs.
As I create them, I am uploading my exercises to my website to make them readily available to all who want them. They are works-in-progress, and are subject to change as I find ways to improve them.
After sharing the first two pages with my current students, I have seen dramatic improvement in volume, strength, and control of sound in the past few weeks alone. I look forward to sharing future exercises with my students in the coming months.
Other features of my site include a schedule of upcoming performances, links to external resources, a page with frequently-asked questions, and a page for prospective students and parents of prospective students to inquire about enrolling in private lessons.
Thanks for reading, and I look forward to sharing more great content in the future!
Upcoming Events
Now you can visit my site or subscribe to my blog to receive notifications about upcoming recitals and appearances! This summer I performed in Brigadoon, at a graduation convocation, on a recording project, and coming up in August I have a performance with Chris Kies on Block Island.
Celebrating Arlene Kies on Block Island
This summer I return to Block Island to perform with Christopher Kies in a joint recital honoring my mother, Arlene Kies, on the Block Island Summer Concert Series on Block Island, Rhode Island. Cameron Greenlee’s annual music festival features artists from across the coast, among whom my mother, Arlene Kies, was welcomed as regular performer. This summer marks the sixth anniversary of my own debut at the festival, and I am delighted to return to perform alongside my father, composer and pianist Christopher Kies.
A Summer of Long Tones
I am pleased to announce my new long tones transcription project. What began as a project to benefit my own practicing, turned into project to help my students develop routines of their own.
Visit my site or subscribe to my blog to receive updates and additional warm-up routines as I add and revise them.
You’re Never Too Young to Start Music
For years I envied my string-instrument-teaching colleagues’ access to child-sized violins and cellos. After years of bitter resentment, a remarkable gift arrived on my metaphorical doorstep: the Nuvo Clarinéo.
Reportedly similar to the instrument on which international soloist Julian Bliss began his clarinet studies at age 4, the Clarinéo surpassed all my expectations of a truly student-model clarinet.
Having started my first student this year on this remarkable invention, I am pleased to report a truly successful first experience.
Check back later or subscribe to receive more updates about my experiences using and teaching with Nuvo products, and my exploration of new pedagogical tools and techniques!