Elissa Milne is one of Australia’s leading composers and teachers, specialising in the composition of educational piano music and creating new resources for 21st century piano teachers. Elissa’s music is included in the syllabuses of the major examination boards around the world. She has over 20 years experience as a private piano teacher, and has been a featured presenter at piano and music teacher conferences around the world. Here, Elissa gives us an insight into her daily life.
There’s really no typical day in my life, I’ve realised as I’ve been thinking about writing this for Pianofforte, but maybe that’s true of any piano teacher who is also a stay-at-home parent:
Midnight: my two-and-three-quarters year old son creeps into my bed, and can’t be persuaded to return to his own. We snuggle down, quietly singing some songs for a while.
5.30am: I am startled awake by someone rattling at the front door; my husband is organising his golf clubs for his last game of his holidays.
8.15am: Tom and I wake up and we play word games still lying in bed.
10am: Breakfast, bathroom, getting dressed, and Tom’s obligatory morning piano performance (involving the full range of the keyboard, a wide range of dyanamics, and most of Tom’s body parts – yes, that means feet, too) all complete.
10.20am: Tom is now happily playing with his grandparents (our next-door neighbours) and I’m fulfilling my one and only New Year’s Resolution: I get on the treadmill.
11.30am: With Tom and my mum now down at the playground, I pack my laptop and head off to get my hair coloured. I’m doing seminars with piano teachers around Australia next week, so I’m sprucing up. While the colour is working so am I, tapping away on my laptop while the other hair salon clients flick through Harper’s Bazaar, Gourmet Traveller and Hello.
2pm: Back home, and the handout for the seminar is about half-done. I will be talking about how to choose the right examination repertoire for your students. The Australian Music Examination Board has a huge syllabus, with about 100 pieces at each grade level! I’m putting together sample programs for the handout, and I need to play the pieces through on the piano.
4pm: I really have to send this article off to Laura at Faber Music before she gets to work (8pm Sydney time). But…we are out of groceries, so I zip off to the shops.
5.45pm: The dinner/bath/bed routine. While my husband supervises the bath I check online to see what’s been happening on Twitter, on Facebook (I’ve recently had two lovely conversations with piano teachers on facebook about my piece, Mozzie), checking out activity on my blog (I like to approve comments as quickly as possible to keep the conversation going), and finally my emails. There’s an urgent query about a discrepancy between a recording and the final proof of the matching publication that are going to press here in Australia at the end of next week. I spend about 40 minutes comparing what we’ve done in other volumes in the series to work out the best solution.
8.15pm: My son is still awake, so I abandon the idea of getting the dishes done. More song singing.
9.45pm: Finally, Tom’s asleep, and I can attend to this description of what a day in the life of a composer looks like. And it’s at this point that I wryly realise that I haven’t written a single bar of music.