Inventing Music at the Keyboard is a new resource designed to help beginner pianists move beyond simply playing notes toward understanding how music works from the inside out. Built around scales, intervals, listening, and creative exploration, the series aims to cultivate musical fluency, improvisation, and compositional confidence from the very beginning.

The Partimenti Workshop is entering a new phase, with updated curriculum, new teaching materials, and a renewed focus on creative musicianship. Here’s a look at what’s evolving and where the work is headed next.

Imagining a correspondence with Joseph Haydn reveals how partimenti training shaped historical composers — and raises timely questions about listening, creativity, and musical fluency in today’s fast-moving musical world.

Partimenti began in the conservatories of Naples as a playful, listening-based approach to learning harmony, improvisation, and composition. Rediscovered today, this tradition offers powerful insights into musical fluency, creativity, and how musicians have historically learned to speak the language of music.

Quincy Jones’ extraordinary career spanned jazz, film scoring, popular music, and orchestral arranging — and included study with Nadia Boulanger, connecting him to the partimenti tradition. This post reflects on his legacy, musical versatility, and why his training still resonates today.