The Art of Piano Education Awards
We’ve been nominated for Best Digital Resource 2025!
I’m delighted to tell you that both PianoCreativity.com and the Piano Chords Workbook have been nominated for the Best Digital Resource award at the 2025 Art of Piano Education Awards.
We’re up against some really tough competition — which is great! Everybody wins when there’s such a plethora of quality material available. It’s a sign that the piano teaching community is thriving.
In this post I’ll introduce my fellow nominees and then briefly summarise the projects I’ve been nominated for.
The competition
Piano Patterns in Harmony
I was delighted to see that Juan Cabeza’s Piano Patterns in Harmony course was selected: indeed, I was actually one of the people who nominated it!
I reviewed Juan’s course and I’ve also interviewed him:
Unfazed: Teaching Neurodivergent Students
Tim Topham’s spectacularly comprehensive website TopMusic.co has been selected for their course Unfazed: Teaching Neurodivergent Students by Selena Pistoresi. I haven’t had chance to work through the full course but I’ve seen an overview and it looks excellent.
Tim kindly interviewed me for his TopMusic podcast earlier this year. It was a fascinating chat — we’ve got a tonne in common — and Tim was very gracious. His book No Book Beginners has been on my review pile for a long time (I promise I’ll get to it soon, Tim!) It’s an encouraging and inspiring read. If you like Piano Creativity, you’ll be interested in what he’s got to say.
Jumpstarts
I’m also excited about Jumpstarts by Leila Viss. Jumpstarts is a set of 12 themed creativity resources that explore improvisation, composition, playing by ear, and reading from chord sheets and lead sheets. She’s been careful to include a mix of instructional approaches: some are strict (which will suit nervous students), some are freer. It is available as part of her Space To Create course. I haven’t had chance to work through this but it looks very promising.
My projects
Piano Chords Workbook
I wrote the Piano Chords Workbook with Ruth Alberici mainly because I needed it in my studio! When using other pre-existing resources my own students struggled to understand how chords work within a key. That’s a problem because once you understand this, so many things become easier: learning new music, improvising, composing, analysis, etc. The workbook is the solution to that problem.
It’s very practical and is best used at the piano. It works particularly well with visual learners, because it’s so clearly laid out. Here’s a little explainer:
We’ve been delighted with the response we’ve had to it. Thanks to everyone who has written a review and to everyone who nominated us for the award.
Piano Creativity
PianoCreativity.com was set up in March 2024 with the goal of helping piano teachers to include more creativity in their piano lessons. I’ve reviewed a load of resources I like, shared my own creative activities for popular pieces, interviewed inspiring creative piano teachers, and dug deeper into why creativity is important.
I love running this site so I’m delighted to see it’s getting some recognition. Thank you to everyone who nominated it!
The Art of Piano Education Awards
2025 is the sophomore year of this award, set up by the powerhouse that is Elena Cobb of EVC Music with support from Andrew Eales of PianoDao.com. There’s a ceremony in the Royal Albert Hall in early May. Find out more and view all the nominees here.