February 22, 2023 (Wed)  |  10:00-11:30 AM

Topic: Develop the Artist Within: Creative Practice to Compelling Performance

Featured Presenter: Amy Likar

Hybrid: In-Person (encouraged!) and Zoom 

In-Person Location: Opus 11 School of Music (click for map/directions)

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Amy Likar shares her unique Creative Practice approach, which helps students (and teachers!) improve in the practice room and, ultimately, in performance. Add to your teaching Toolbox and learn new techniques to guide students of all levels. Creative Practice combines the best aspects from Amy’s 30 years of study of the Alexander Technique and Body Mapping to the “musical solutions” learned from her decade plus of work with Burton Kaplan. Amy seamlessly weaves together the most effective elements and presents a practical, know-how approach for students and teachers. With years of experience on the concert stage and in the teaching studio, learn how Amy integrates these unique combinations for fresh and fulfilling music making.
 

Noted for her “...dazzling...and winning tonal beauty and eloquence,”(Joshua Kosman, SF Chronicle), Amy Likar is an active freelancer and chamber player based in the San Francisco Bay Area and San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. Expanding on her work as flutist, Amy became fascinated with performance health and wellness through her own recovery from stress-related injuries. In all of her work, Amy is dedicated to helping musicians find the freedom to be fully themselves.
 

Highlights of her performance career include a critically acclaimed premiere of Martin Rokeach’s Concerto for Piccolo and
Orchestra, in addition to the premieres of solo and chamber works by Valerie Coleman, Michael Stephens, Donald Sloan and
Daniel Felsenfeld.
 

Dedicated to helping other musicians reach their full potential, Amy has mentored and credentialed over 50 professionals as the Director of Training for the Association for Body Mapping Education. These educators are now teaching in their own private studios and in institutions such as the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, Amsterdam Conservatoire, Columbus State University, and Oberlin Conservatory.
 

Likar serves on the faculty at Saint Mary’s College of California as instructor of flute and is a member of the Oakland Symphony.
 

She regularly offers performance residencies and workshops that focus on getting to the essence of music making. She is a VQPowell Performing Artist and the author of the Breathing Book for Flute and the editor and narrator of Move Well, Avoid Injury.

 

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TBA 2023 (Wed)  |  10:00-11:30 AM

Topic TBD

Featured Presenter: TBD

Hybrid: In-Person (encouraged!) and Zoom 

In-Person Location: Opus 11 School of Music (click for map/directions)

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Details to follow

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Past Programs

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November 16, 2022 (Wed) |  10:00-11:30 AM

Topic: Awareness Through Movement: Applications for the Teaching Studio & Stage

Featured Presenter: Meeranai Shim

Hybrid: In-Person (encouraged!) and Zoom 

In-Person Location: Opus 11 School of Music (click for map/directions)

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Flutist and Guild Certified Feldenkrais Practitioner Meerenai Shim will share how to cultivate awareness for optimal movement and learning; especially as applied to music teaching and performance. Meerenai will lead participants through some movement explorations that can be done sitting in a chair.

 

Translated in Korean as “Milky Way” or “Galaxy”, the artistic career of Meerenai Shim (pronounced “ME-ren-ey”, like they) is appropriately expansive and all-encompassing. A flutist with a new music focus, she promotes contemporary work through myriad channels, including as a solo performer, her chamber ensembles, her record label, and her own discography of three albums, all of which have been warmly reviewed.

 

Meerenai has performance credits across the United States, including within the Soundwave Biennial in San Francisco, the Bang on a Can Summer Festival, the National Flute Association’s annual Conventions, and numerous universities. Her impact across new music manifests in part from her two chamber ensembles: she is involved as a founding member of the innovative flute and percussion duo, A/B Duo (2013), and joined the contemporary flute trio Areon Flutes in 2016. 

 

Meerenai is also a Guild Certified Feldenkrais Practitioner(CM) and has been a movement coach for musicians since 2012. Between 2012 and 2016 she taught the Alexander Technique-based course, “What Every Musician Needs to Know About the Body” in private workshops, universities, and summer festivals. She makes her home in Campbell, California with her husband Dave, and their Great Dane mix, Lady.​

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