Clark Bryan is an award-winning concert pianist and recording artist. He has studied with some of the greatest pianists of our times. With more than a dozen albums to his credit, Clark has also recorded over two thousand piano works since the Pandemic. As a teacher, Bryan has taught thousands of students, adjudicated more than 75 music festivals coast-to-coast in Canada, given dozens of workshops and written a book, “Gateways to Learning and Memory”. In 2004, he founded The Aeolian Performing Arts Centre. Today, this historic and legendary Centre is recognized as a beacon for arts and culture in Ontario and regularly hosts musical artists of many genres and is prized for the gift of intimacy and acoustics it provides to both audiences and performers. Bryan believes that everyone should have universal access to music, art, education, and culture. Because of this belief, he launched El Sistema Aeolian in 2011. This free, UNESCO award-winning program has offered more than a thousand children and youth an opportunity to experience the joy of a rich musical education. “Music is one of the most powerful tools we have for social change,” he says. In all his work with the arts and education work, Clark displays a progressive, social-justice mindset. Other innovations have included Aeolian Pride Choruses, Rebelheart Collective, Aeolian Talks, A National Song Writing Competition and The Aeolian Jazz and Musical Arts Festival. Bryan was awarded Musical Personality of the Year (2005) and won a Jack Richardson Award for Community Contribution (2011). In 2017, Mr. Bryan was given the Western Alumni Award of Merit and inducted into the Don Wright Faculty of Music Wall of Fame. In 2018, Clark was recognized with a Canada 150 Award through the House of Commons for his contributions to community and the nation. In 2022, Clark won Best Classical Solo Musician at Forest City London Music Awards. In 2023, Bryan was featured in a book about London by renowned author Richard Bain. In 2023, Clark was awarded a Lifetime achievement award from the Forest City London Music Awards and inducted into the London Music Hall of Fame. In 2024, he was awarded The Mayor’s Honour List from The City of London. Bryan continues to extend his reach into the community. Whether speaking about the power and joy of music study in his TEDX talk or engaging in community activism, Clark is committed to community. He speaks regularly at events, is featured on radio, newsprint and television.

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We live in a time of technology and electronics. There are so many benefits to technological innovation and so many downsides as well. You probably have read a book in electronic format by now (or at least some part of one) and also read a traditional paper book. The digital text and screen is convenient and space saving. It might also be environmentally friendly (although there are debates about the ecological imprint of an electronic device, its manufacturing footprint on the environment and how often it needs to be replaced and recycled. There’s also the issue of the screen time and what this is doing to our bodies and minds. Real books save your eyes, don’t emit radiation and look great in a library:)

Enter the piano. Digital pianos abound. You can by the cheap partial keyboard piano online or in stores in many places. You could by a full keyboard/electronic piano at places like Costco fairly cheaply. You could also invest in cutting edge technology with a Yamaha digital piano (there are many different kinds including ones that have real actions in them).

When it comes to real pianos (I mean the acoustic kind made of wood, metal, real strings etc.), there are so many options. You can by some pretty cheap ones being produced in places like China (even Yamaha has entry level upright pianos and grands that are not great quality). You can also spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on brands like Bösendorfer or Fazioli.

How does one make a decision about the right piano for your personal needs? First off, quality is everything. Buy the best and the biggest (with acoustic upright and grand pianos) you can afford. Why? You could argue that “my son/daughter is just starting out, so we’re going to buy a less quality/expensive piano”. This is a fundamental mistake. Every note you play, how the keyboard feels and how the sound forms, sets the human response. If the sound is artificial (electronic sampling) and poor quality, there will be a huge negative impact on the human response to the music. If the strings are really short in length, they will not produce great sound. The longer the strings, the better the sound quality. That’s why there are such things as concert grands on stages of concert venues around the world. If you buy cheap, you are setting up the possibility of failed interest in music.

I’m a bit of a purist when it comes to electronic instruments. They are convenient for moving around and not needing tuning. You can also often sample many different types of sounds like harpsichord and organ. When in a pinch, I’ve practiced on these myself. I’ve even travelled with them when on tour, practicing in the hotel room with headphones on. If you buy one of these instruments, be sure to get the best quality you can afford: the sampling of sounds and keyboard weighting will sound and feel more like a real piano. These instruments are often very convenient if you live in an apartment. Yamaha has a technology that can be installed in acoustic pianos that allows one to switch from acoustic to digital, so you can have the best of both worlds. It’s called the Diskclavier.

Much of the music written since the late 18th century for keyboard was written for a real acoustic piano. I highly recommend the purchase of an acoustic instrument over top of the digital ones. The ability to blend/mix sound cannot be matched by an electronic piano. Like a real book, your body’s response to the sounds and music created by a real piano will be different than an electronic digital instrument. The piano is a a magnificent invention that so many composers loved and continue to love today. Do some research and find a wonderful acoustic instrument if you can make that work for you. The brands I recommend are Yamaha (high quality and stand up in multiple climate zones), Bösendorfer, Steinway, Fazioli (if you can afford one of these, I’ll be right over to play it for you!), Kawai, Bechstein, Schimmel, Steingraeber & Söhne, Grotrian-Steinweg, and Sauter. 

You can purchase a used piano, but remember, pianos are like cars, they don’t age that well. Don’t buy an old piano unless it’s been completely reconditioned with new hammers, new strings and other important replacements. Even with a complete makeover, the quality might not be that great as the sound board has likely lost its crown (this is the wood under the strings). Do some research and learn as much as you can about pianos before you buy one!



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Ranking systems for education are extremely flawed and myopic. For example, the U.S. World and News report ranks Canada in the top five countries for education. But what does this mean? If you ask students about schooling in Canada, most will not be happy with the system. They often talk about short-term memory and forgetting everything after tests. They also are exasperated about the extensive and intensive testing including standardized tests. Most don’t see the point of the curriculum and delivery. Even teachers are fed-up with the system where they often feel they can’t be creative in their teaching. I’ve done hundreds of interviews with teachers and students to determine this conclusion. Perhaps you have your own stories.

A growing gap in enriched education is happening. Many schools don’t have arts or music programs. Some schools have everything. Often this is related to class and wealth gaps. Some school districts have public schools for the arts where a limited amount of students can attend by audition. So many are turned away. A good example of this is Pearson School for the Arts in London Ontario. Why should one school be an arts school and the rest not have that branding. Research is showing that every child will benefit greatly from an arts education and that it is fundamental to having the ability to create anything in life. Neuroscientists as Stanford and many other Universities have research to prove this.

We can’t go on measuring education by test scores. We must measure it by well-being and grit. How engaged are students in learning for the sake of the benefits to their lives? I’m not talking about the corporate job, I’m talking about building who we are as human beings (not human doings) and being able to flourish in our world. We need a moral reconning as a society! What values should we use when measuring education and our lives in general? In places like Finland (the happiest country in the world for the seventh year in a row), they focus on the well-being of the student. They don’t test in the first seven years of education as they trust their teachers to know how the students are doing and what they need to succeed. Education is also free to the PhD!

Education equity is one of the major footprints leading to our social ailments. People are slipping through the cracks and ending up on our streets in large part because of our education inequity. Let’s strive to correct this. At a time when we need to re-brand our country, let’s make education our number one investment!

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There’s a lot of research happening around achievement. One of the most illuminating discoveries so far is that achievement doesn’t make us happy. Once we achieve a goal, research is showing that there is a brief period of elation often followed by a long period of depression. Perhaps you’ve heard the expression “it’s about the journey”. Well, it really is. That’s not to say that achieving goals isn’t good for our well-being. It is a major footprint in Martin Seligman’s model for well-being. Research is showing that it’s about how we contextualize achievement as a marker along the way of our life-journey.

What about motivation? I certainly grew up thinking that motivation was going to lead to success and happiness. This is now being disproven. It’s actually daily habits that make us achieve and grow. I highly recommend reading James Clear’s book called “Atomic Habits” to learn more about how to develop habits and the role they play in our life-goals and our sense of fullfillment.

Here’s a brief TED talk about goals and happiness that helps illustrate what I’m talking about:

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Classical music has a strong tradition of passing legacy for interpretation. Overtly, this includes teaching in a way that involves a fixed mind set. Teachers often present fingering, dynamics, tempos, voicing, emotional canvas through a lens that is inflexible. Most of us who play classical music come from this tradition, but it is slowly changing with each new generation.

It’s so important to realize that there are many truths. That’s not to say that there aren’t stylistic parameters to adhere to, but as Chick Corea once said to me: “Classical Musicians take themselves too seriously”, meaning that they are rigid in their view of the gods of music. The composer is like a god to many and what they have left behind is like the holy text that needs to be adhered to. This become quite a complicated mind-set when tackling composers like Chopin and Bach who left us variants in their musical texts, often including different notes, ornaments, pedal markings and many other details. How can there then be one truth.

This mind-set is further exacerbated by the “Conservatory” who puts metronome and interpretive markings where they never existed in the original texts. Conservatories also often produce recordings that set an expectation for interpretation. I actually have a friend who is a famous Canadian violinist who was asked to record an entire grade of music for a Conservatory. He’s super famous internationally as a great musician, but was told to adhere to the metronome markings the Conservatory had added to many of the pieces.

When we’re younger, we need models, so having clear instructions to imitate is a helpful framework to build a foundation. There also needs to be a clear pathway to encouraging students to interpret themselves so that they can become artists. Here’s hoping that the classical music lineage continues to promote some free expression so that everyone has the potential for artistry and not just imitation.

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As a musician, I often get wrapped up into my work to the point where I’ve done nothing else all day. In the short term, I get a lot done.

It’s important to remember that in order to have some insight and ability to interpret and write music, we all need social connections. We need to live; not isolated, but amongst real people face-to-face. As physical health, emotional health, mental health and many more facets of our health are so important, social health is often neglected. Send a note, reach out to a family member, have coffee with a friend, get out and be with people and interact with them. Your music with thrive as a result. You will feel whole

I highly recommend the TED talk by Kasley Killam on this subject

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At a time when we are using our bodies in overdrive for technology, it’s important we consider how we maintain a healthy physiology. When we compound keyboarding on devices with keyboarding on musical instruments (of course many other types of instruments and jargon to describe their uses), we must consider our bodies like high level athletes.

When musicians train, we learn specific movements, endurance, speed and strength. We are basically Olympic Athletes using finer motor skills. Like all athletes, we need to train. We warm up with stretching, exercises (both isometric and isotonic) including away from at and at the instrument, resistance training, working with repetition on speed, strength and endurance. We spend many hours in often very uncomfortable positions. Injuries happen frequently and musicians are often not trained to deal with them or trained how to prevent them.

I encourage all musicians to get to the gym, explore overall fitness but also learn exercises to help with countering specific repetitive movements we use playing our instruments. Exercise is key to both a healthy body and a healthy mind!

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Conservatism: resistance to change, promotion of tax cuts, deregulation of industry, oppositions to same-sex marriage, opposition to abortion, opposition to gender ideology, perpetuation of inequality and discrimination through the resistance to change with issues like climate change, perpetuation of moral teaching based on one religious framework, defines of one social structure around the nuclear family, skepticism of globalism, support of capitalism (billionaires are running politics), limited government including support for healthcare, education and social supports, belief in reducing government and government services…..

Should I go on? They don’t teach these things in school, but any AI search will report these trends. Is this Canadian? Please don’t vote conservative!!! Anything but!

Everything is political. Education relies on politics that support equity, inclusion and diversity.

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It’s a time of great polarity. Never has this been more obvious than the debate around AI and its future.

AI has great potential for good, but also great potential to destroy us and our planet. I am personally embracing the journey to use AI for good. It’s here and not going away (except in the case of destruction). What I’ve experienced with new technologies in education is nothing short of a miracle. Teaching assistants, student tutors, gaming education and increased student engagement and measuring performance are just a few of the advancements that will change education forever.

As we begin the journey to explore AI in education, we need to focus on the values and ethics we need to make it help us effectively. The United Nations has been studying “Artificial Intelligence and the futures of Learning”. I highly recommend visiting their website on this subject for resources around development, ethical use and applications in education. Visit: https://www.unesco.org/en/digital-education/ai-future-learning

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I had the great privilege of being invited to California State University at San Marcos to co-present a poster session on a new virtual classroom my friend Jim Wolfston at CollegeNET has created.

I was really hesitant to travel to the U.S.A. with the social unrest, political turmoil and Canada’s backlash against proposed tariffs the U.S. is planning for our country.

I’m glad I went! Social Mobility is the movement to help individuals and families to move up from stressful backgrounds of economic and social poverty to better lives. Its focus is on educational opportunities as a means to gather wealth; particularly University and College education. The gaps between those with wealth and those without are widening. This is not good for societies as it can lead to social unrest or opportunistic social engineering by those who gain power for personal wealth and control. These are the times we are living in!

While the conference was happening, protests could be heard outside of the facility on campus. I was actually escorted into the building with staff and police. The protests were against ICE and the forced removal of the “dreamers” from the U.S. Although many attending the conference would like to make the campuses “Sanctuaries” for the dreamers, the administration and particularly the University President is caught in a bind. If they do this, President Trump will cut their funding and shame them. This could be the end of higher education. He’s already starting to cut funding to higher education. Educated people often can see broadly and speak against things like tyranny. That is the situation as it stands.

I heard presentations from Presidents of Universities across the nation, students and those with lived experiences of coming from various poverties into higher education. The students stories were so compelling. Those stories remind me a lot of the work I have done with families and kids in The Aeolian’s El Sistema program. Newcomer families risk everything to make a better life for themselves, but especially for their children.

The advice given by those attending including Senators and State leaders was to “Stay Focused” on the Mission and Vision of equity, diversity and inclusion. A vision President Trump and his followers are trying to kill. There is so much noise in the world right now that can derail us and wear us down. Stay focused on your vision to make the world a better place and don’t let Trump and his agenda take away your dreams and creative work to make both your own life better and the lives of those around you!

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What should we make of online courses and “hacks” that claim to teach either the best way or cut corners to successful learning?  This is a fascinating area.  There are so many wonderful tools on the web that can help musicians grow.  Youtube videos by great masters, interviews with great artists, pedagogical resources (such as websites with free music scores like http://www.imslp.org), websites, games, virtual lessons, courses, specialized platforms, interest groups and more.  

With learning, one size doesn’t fit all.  We all bring our unique mind, motivation and heart to learning.  Claims from an online resource that there is one way or the best way is both false and naïve.  There are great opportunities for online resources and apps to strengthen and cultivate musicianship.  But there is also no substitute for a real guide; a real person to share the learning experience with!  Find someone with experience, openness and curiosity.  Someone with passion and optimism.  Someone to demonstrate physically and acoustically (with a real piano). Someone who builds a relationship in person with heightened levels of communication and awareness.  Someone to form a relationship with as a trusted guide opening doors of inspiration.  Someone who learns from the learner and is humble enough to understand the partnership between a learner and teacher. If face-to-face is impossible, the next best thing is an online lesson with a real person-not just an app.

Holding the tension between Artificial Intelligence, online resources and virtual formats for games, lessons and more is the solution.  The landscape of pedagogy is changing rapidly.  Don’t hold on to any one truth; be open and curious for ways that can help you, “the individual learner” to grow. Embrace resources as tools, but not as “the way, truth and light”.