Phillip Keveren has created some of my favourite arrangements for piano. All of his pieces are beautiful, pianistic and playable.

As he points out in the interview, you don’t want a student doesn’t want to be working on a pop arrangement for 6 months, and his work makes these pieces students want to play accessible to them at their level.

Phillip got his start with fairly traditional piano lessons, but he was lucky enough to have teachers who never tried to squash his creativity. They supported his exploration, and he learnt by studying what other composers had done and trying to apply it to his own pieces.

Take a listen to get an insight into a day in the life of a modern composer and what makes him tick.

Transcript

If you’d like to download a PDF transcript of this episode, please click below.

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In this episode, you’ll learn

• How Phillip got his start in music in a traditional lesson environment
• How his early teachers encouraged his creativity
• What he does to continue to learn even now by looking at scores
• What his arranging process looks like and how he decides on the levelling
• How Phillip got started with Hal Leonard
• Some of his favourite books and arrangements
• How we can foster the skill of arranging in our own students

Links Mentioned

• Classical Folk
• Classical Jazz

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Do you have a favourite Phillip Keveren collection?

Is one of his books a “go-to” resource in your studio? Leave your top recommendation from his vast canon in the comments below!